


Tremors

by Different_approach



Series: Risk/Reward/Annihilation [3]
Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anal Sex, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Mating Bites, Oral Sex, Panic Attacks, Past Male Pregnancy, Physical Abuse, Police Brutality, Prison, Staci Pratt goes to therapy then fucks up anyway, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, but I’m so far off-book with that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-05-20 20:53:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14901821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Different_approach/pseuds/Different_approach
Summary: (This is so incredibly not interesting I’m sure, but I wrote it. Makes zero sense without reading Coming Down)No one in this scenario should really be trusted with their own recovery. There are many bad decisions made.





	1. Chapter 1

Staci’s therapist smiles at him politely, every other Tuesday at 12:15, when Staci technically takes his lunch. Really though, he just dips in and out of his mandated sessions. He won’t have to attend much longer, he doesn’t think. His job performance has been fine.

Whitehorse told him to take time off. Staci reminded him that he had to make money to survive. And there are limited employment options in rural Montana. The Sheriff’s office is still his best option. Besides, Whitehorse would be short staffed, with both Joey and Caleb gone.

Joey’s moved to California, left after the conclusion of John Seed’s trial. Didn’t stay for sentencing. Couldn’t bear to watch him get off easy. Couldn’t bear to watch Caleb stand by John as the verdict was read. 

Twenty years is still a lot. But everyone knows he deserves more. But John was just so terribly sympathetic on the stand, his belly full and round and Caleb’s bite on his neck. Joey snickered that omegas always get off easy. No one ever thinks them cruel.

Staci reminded her that he’s an omega and she flippantly responded, “I don’t mean you.”

Ultimately, the Marshals’ office didn’t press any charges against Whitehorse and his deputies. While all four of them had killed members of the cult, the circumstances of Hope County more than rendered their violence justifiable. 

Caleb comes to visit Staci at the station, all smiles and nervous energy. He’s moving to Seattle, he tells Staci. That’s where they’re transferring John, at least until after he gives birth. Then, he doesn’t know where they’ll send him.

“You’re going to follow him around, prison to prison, for the next twenty years?” Staci can’t believe what Caleb is saying.

“John is my _mate_ Stace. We chose each other. Once the baby is weaned, I’m going to raise them and….I want them to know their other father. So yeah, I guess I’m following him around,” Caleb laughs, running his fingers through his hair. “Wild, right?”

That’s a word for it.

—

It’s another year before Staci hears from Caleb again. He’s moved to Colorado Springs. John’s been transferred to the medium security facility at Florence, CO. He asks Staci if he wants to visit.

Staci says no. Says no again three months later when Caleb calls again.

Sheriff Whitehorse dies in the Spring. Peacefully in his bed. Staci calls Caleb for the first time. He’s not sure why he does it. Maybe he’s just lonely.

“Yeah,” he says, tilting to look up at the office ceiling. He’s put in his notice that he’s leaving. “I’ll visit.”

—

Caleb picks Staci up from the airport, his daughter strapped into her car seat in the back. Staci doesn’t get the chance to get a good look at her before Caleb pulls away, the traffic cop blowing her whistle for Caleb to merge into traffic. 

It’s not until they’re at Caleb’s house, a small but sturdy ranch style home with a single floor and a cruddy driveway, that Staci gets to really look at her. Caleb grabs the kid out of the back seat, cooing at her while he unfastens the straps that kept her safe, before asking if Staci wants to hold her?

“Her name is Delilah,” Caleb explains, holding the baby out like he’s still not used to handling her. Staci doesn’t tell him that he already knows. It was in the tabloids. She’s been with him about six months now. “She’s fourteen months, she can even sort of walk now!” Caleb smiles, “and calls me dada and everything.”

Staci just stares at first, before reaching out to take Delilah from her father, a little scared that Caleb won’t take no for an answer. He doesn’t have a lot of experience with kids, but Staci is at least confident in holding her.

Her eyes are bright and blue, because of course they are.

Caleb’s house is a mess inside. Would have been foolish to expect anything else. Empty pizza boxes stacked on the kitchen island, glass jars of baby food unwashed in the sink. Caleb shows Staci to the second bedroom, which, thankfully is cleaner than everywhere else in the house. Caleb tosses Staci’s duffel bag onto the bed. The gray comforter has little silver stars. It’s so damn quaint Staci doesn’t know how to react.

Instead of pizza, Caleb orders Chinese delivery for dinner. He doesn’t ask Staci what he wants, ordering for both of them. Technically, Staci doesn’t mind, but he should have said something about it.

But they eat on the couch with comfortable conversation. Caleb apologizes for not coming out for Whitehorse’s funeral. He couldn’t get off work. He has the kind of office job he always expected, rather than the deputy’s position he sort of took on a whim. Because he wanted to help people. Mostly he’s left alone, although some of his coworkers know him from the trial. None of them have the balls to ask about John Seed.

With a heavy sigh, Staci admits that it’s been hard, staying in Montana, where everyone knows. Hell, a lot of people lived through the nightmare with them. But they didn’t know...everything before Jacob’s trial. And now they look at Staci with pity, concern. It was important, for Staci, to testify. The prosecutors wanted to make as many charges stick as possible. And Staci wasn’t an insignificant part of that.

They end up watching censored horror movies on tv, Delilah in Caleb’s lap. She claps at the particularly loud, violent parts and Staci is mildly concerned she actually knows what’s going on.

Staci has nearly nodded off when Caleb gets up to put Delilah to bed in his room. Once she’s down, he comes back, flopping onto the couch next to Staci, his arm draped over the backrest.

“You’re okay, though?” Caleb asks, his voice pinched.

Staci lets himself lean against Caleb’s side, laughing into his shirt. “Of course I’m not.”

Caleb runs his fingers through Staci’s hair. “Yeah,” Caleb admits, “me neither.”

They end up sharing the bed in Caleb’s room, rather than Staci sleeping alone. Caleb’s heavy arm is warm around Staci’s waist. W R A T H in black lettering is still shockingly bold against Caleb’s pale chest.

Caleb’s skin smells clean, nondescript. They’ve both been back on blockers since the end of Eden’s Gate. Caleb mumbles that it’s nice, to share a bed with someone. Staci agrees.

—

Staci misses his flight back to Montana. Then fails to buy another ticket. Instead, he buys a used car and looks for jobs, even though Caleb says he doesn’t have to work, if he doesn’t want.

“Do the photographers still come around?” Staci asks, scrolling through craigslist job ads on his his phone.

Caleb shakes his head, shoveling cereal in his mouth. “Nah, I’m not interesting enough for a whole ass person to be stuck in Colorado Springs full time. Those pictures, they had flown someone out because they found out the date I was picking up Delilah. They left like, three days later.”

Staci hums, opening up new tabs on his phone for jobs that look promising, “Still, people will get weird. If I’m living with you and not working. They’ll paint it as some sort of...love triangle.”

“Oh god,” Caleb laughs. “You’re fucking right, I guess.” He ruffles his own hair, “Yeah, I guess if you’re working, it looks less like I’m trying to keep another omega on the side. Fuck. But,” Caleb chews at his lip, “don’t worry about it if you don’t find something right away. You’re doing me a huge favor by staying.”

Staci knows he means that he helps to soothe Caleb’s loneliness. And take care of Delilah, though that is secondary. Staci has been taking care of her during the day while Caleb is gone, but she does technically have a daycare she was attending before Staci arrived. More than anything, neither Caleb, nor Staci, have someone else who understands.

—

With Staci around to entertain Delilah, Caleb tries to cook. He ends up subscribing to one of those services that drops a box of food on their doorstep once a week, with printed instructions on exactly what he’s supposed to do.

The first couple of weeks are a struggle, but after that, Caleb seems to get the hang of it. Staci mostly cooks the other days, though he just makes simple things he knows he can’t fuck up.

Caleb chops peppers on the kitchen island while Staci sits on the floor with Delilah, helping her stand up, take a few steps, fall back down. It’s comfortable at this point, routine.

“Hey,” Caleb says, stopping the steady movement of the knife, “uh, I don’t know how to bring this up but, you uh. Shouldn’t let this,” he gestures to nothing in particular with the knife still in his hand, “stop you from dating, if you want.”

Staci winces, pretty sure that Caleb is only bringing this up because he’s going to visit John tomorrow. Normally, he takes Delilah with him to see her other dad, but Caleb asked if Staci didn’t mind watching her for the day. Staci can put two and two together about what kind of visit Caleb has scheduled.

“It’s fine,” Staci mumbles, correcting himself, “I know.” Mostly he doesn’t want to explain to Caleb he hasn’t had sex in two years. That before they started sharing a bed, no one has really touched him since Jacob Seed. “I’m not interested.”

“Okay,” Caleb exhales loudly, going back to chopping.

—

Staci ends up with a job at the university, staffing the front desk of one of the academic buildings. The hours are regular and the benefits good. The older woman who hires him says to let her know if anyone gives him trouble, and Staci is certain then that she recognizes who he is. But after a few weeks, it’s clear none of the students paid enough attention to the news at the time to recognize him.

He goes to work earlier than Caleb, but gets done earlier too. So Caleb takes him to Delilah’s daycare to introduce him properly, so the teachers know that it’s okay for Staci to pick her up after work.

One of the teachers, a young woman, maybe twenty-two at most, works up the courage after a few days to ask if Staci and Caleb are together. Or if Caleb is single? Staci stares at her wide eyed, Delilah tucked against his shoulder. Only then he realizes that it’s not obvious that Caleb is bonded. Of course it’s not. As an alpha, he doesn’t have a mark, and none of them give off scents. 

“We’re friends,” Staci stumbles, not sure how much to say or not say.

The next day, while Staci is a work, Caleb texts him a bunch of laughing emojis, telling Staci it’s okay. If people ask, he can tell them that Delilah’s dad and him are bonded. Just lie and say that her other dad he’s away for work. It’s what Caleb tells everyone who gets curious.

Staci texts back, “Okay,” though he’s not sure how Caleb plans to keep this up for another eighteen years.

—

Staci’s job involves long stretches of inactivity, with little to occupy his time other than dicking around on his phone. As long as he’s available if someone needs directions, or to help a professor who has locked themselves out of their office, or glare at kids causing too much noise, he’s mostly left to his own devices.

He doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing, when he types in Caleb’s name. It’s been...a long time since Staci has read any articles about the “war.” Even when he did, he never searched for his own name. Caleb was the one who was the darling of the press. Tall and handsome, basically a fucking action hero once stories started swirling about the resistance and what he accomplished. On top of that, bonded and having a child with the youngest, prettiest of the Seed brothers. The news sites sort of skipped over John’s sadistic behavior, his sociopathic glee. Joey was so angry. She had every right to be.

Caleb is right that there really isn’t much in terms of current coverage. The last story in “news” dates from two months ago, and it’s just Caleb’s and John’s names mentioned in an article about a different bonded Alpha/Omega couple with the Omega behind bars. Usually, when that happens, it’s the other way around.

Below the article are a bunch of related stories. Staci glances over them quickly, the words mostly a blur. But one of them has Jacob’s face, a picture from the trial, his beard neatly trimmed and hair shorter than he wore it before. Staci shouldn’t pause on it. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t read the headline either.

The article is from a week ago, about Jacob’s transfer to high security at Florence. Staci clicks through. The article is short, mostly about the fact that while John Seed is in medium security, Jacob has been transferred to Florence High. Joseph is still at Terra Haute CMU. In the comments, the top response is from someone claiming that Jacob murdered a guard at Allenwood, and that he’s really being transferred to Florence ADX. But the top response to that is if Jacob Seed really killed a guard, there would definitely be news coverage.

Staci’s hands are shaking by the time he closes out of the browser window. He’s shaken the rest of the day. A strange sort of curling anxiousness, that isn’t really fear. Jacob can’t hurt him now. Can’t do anything Staci doesn’t want. He flexes his fingers around his phone.

—

“What is it like?” Staci asks Caleb, as he’s chopping up mushrooms for dinner. Staci doesn’t actually like mushrooms, but he’s never told Caleb that. So he doesn’t bother to complain now. “I mean, visiting John in prison?”

Caleb stops chopping for a second, then resumes. Delilah plays with her blocks by herself on the floor. Reruns of Seinfeld playing on the television. 

“I mean, it feels normal now, I guess. It’s just….routine. We’re not separated from each other in the room, because you know, he still has parental rights for Delilah. He gets to hold her and play with her. There’s an officer in the room with us except for, you know, _those_ visits. But he’s pretty unobtrusive. It’s nice to get to touch him. Being close. I miss him, but visiting makes things easier.” He pops a piece of mushroom in his mouth, “Having you around makes it easier too. John knows you’re here, by the way. Said I looked less tired and I told him why I was sleeping better.”

“Oh,” Staci responds, “Okay.”

Caleb must already know about Jacob, “You thinking of...oh fuck,” Caleb laughs, “What would your therapist say?”

Caleb knows all about the months Staci spent talking to a specialist, trying to work through what had happened. Staci does think that talking helped, because he doesn’t feel so stranded, so hopeless broken and without worth. But he’d never say he’s repaired. He’s not sure that’s possible. Caleb admits he never talked to anyone. No one forced him, so he just...didn’t.

“I don’t know. That I’m self-sabotaging or something similar? Or that my feelings are normal, but that doesn’t mean I should act on them. It’s okay that I still think about him. But seeing him won’t make it better.”

Caleb hums, dumping the mushrooms into the baking dish and pouring cheese overtop. “You know I’m like, the least appropriate person ever to give you advice on this.”

“I’m not looking for advice,” Staci admits, “if I wanted someone to tell me not to do it, I would have called Joey.”

“She picks up when you call?” Caleb asks.

Staci winces, realizing that Caleb has probably tried to contact her before, and Joey probably never responded. “Yeah, she does.”

“Cool,” Caleb says, shoving the dish into the oven.

—

Staci doesn’t go that month, or the next. But he tries looking up how to visit someone at Florence High, since it might be different than where they keep John. He ends up having to call to get the details. The administrator chirps politely, asking who he’s looking to visit. When he goes quiet, she proceeds to tell him the procedure, and asks him if he needs anything else. For Staci to visit, the inmate has to fill out the necessary paperwork, then Staci has to be approved. Staci tells her he understands, hanging up once he says goodbye and thanks her for her help.

He looks up Jacob by his inmate number online, copies down the mailing address to send him a letter, but doesn’t write anything at all. He puts the envelope, addressed and stamped, back into the pile of papers by the door. Caleb never sorts through the mail, so Staci doesn’t think anything of it.

—

It snows before Staci comes back to the envelope, turning it in his hands. He checks the federal prison site again, confirming Jacob is still in Florence, before deciding, yeah, he wants to write…

There’s nothing much in his letter. He doesn’t know how much contact inmates can have with each other. Maybe Jacob already knows Staci is in Colorado. But probably not. He might not even know his brother is just up the road at the medium security facility. Staci doesn’t know if he can tell Jacob that.

In the end, his letter is short. Too short really. That Staci is staying with Caleb, that his niece looks a lot like John. That Staci doesn’t know why he’s writing. But he’s thinking of coming to see Jacob. Maybe.

A week later, a form comes in the mail for Staci to complete. Jacob’s messy handwriting across most of it. The box for “spouse” is checked, then crossed out, and “friend/acquaintance” marked instead. 

Staci sits at the kitchen table, the application spread out in front of him and a pen in hand, when Caleb makes it home.

“That from Jacob?” Caleb asks, shucking off his coat.

Staci looks up from the document, “Oh, yeah...it is.”

“You’re touching your neck,” Caleb observes. Staci pulls away his hand as if it’s been burned.

There’s nothing left of Jacob’s bite. Though it took a full week to disappear after the chemical divorce. The edges of it had lingered, faintly, but Staci could still see the traces. But now, it’s well and truly gone.

Caleb gets started on dinner while Staci gathers up the application, his sections still blank.

But the next day, at work, he finishes up what he’s supposed to fill in. He mails out the application in the afternoon, and a week later he gets a call from a different administrator in Pennsylvania who handles visitor applications for the entire prison system. He says he has to ask Staci a few more questions, to confirm that Jacob and Staci knew each other before his incarceration.

“Fuck,” Staci laughs bitterly, “I mean...there’s footage.”

The administrator says he knows, he just has to have Staci’s answers on paper. There might be an issue, since technically they knew each other only while Jacob was actively involved in the criminal activity for which he is currently serving time. But there’s also a precedent for allowing previously bonded Alpha/Omega pairs, since some choose to break the bond for practical reasons when one is incarcerated long-term.

“We were never married,” Staci points out, “obviously.”

“Do you want to see him, or not?” He sighs, “bonding even without a marriage license is grounds for common-law.”

“Yeah, okay,” it doesn’t sit well with him that technically, at least in this case, he might still be considered Jacob’s mate.

It’s another two weeks after that before Staci gets a letter from Jacob. It’s short, shorter than Staci’s was. 

“I’m glad you’re okay. Maybe sometime I can see the kid. Though I was warned you might not get approved. Don’t know if they’d let Nylander and her visit. You’re approved though. I’d like to see you. Jacob.”

Staci leaves the letter out, where he’s pretty sure Caleb will lean over and scan the contents. And the next weekend, as Caleb bundles Delilah up to face the cold, he asks Staci if he called to say he was coming?

“Yeah,” Staci admits, heading back to the bedroom to grab a sweater and different shoes than the one he leaves by the door.


	2. Chapter 2

Staci has to turn over most of what he’s brought, his phone, his coat, he empties out his pockets. He’s allowed to keep his wallet, after the guard checks that there’s no cash in it. Staci dumps everything else into a plastic bin. The guard points to where he can sit and wait, until he’s called to the room.

The air in the waiting room is stale and dry, heat running at full blast to keep up with the cold outside. There are maybe a dozen other people waiting, families mostly, some with small children. He watches as two kids from different families play with each other like they’ve met before, then Staci realizes that they probably have. That Caleb and John’s situation is maybe only remarkable because Caleb’s not the one locked up. And because Hope County was high profile at the time. Not so much, anymore.

A guard comes from behind a solid metal door at the far end of the waiting room, calling Staci’s name. He looks a little surprised when Staci stands up, but he’s used to that, it’s just his name being more often considered a woman’s. He’s already had a whole lifetime of getting used to that. The guard checks his driver’s license just to make sure that the names match.

“Come a long way?” the guard comments, handing the ID back. 

Staci hasn’t bothered to get a Colorado license yet, he really should.

“Yeah,” Staci responds, not feeling the need to explain. 

Jacob is already in the room, when Staci is brought in. Dressed in blue scrubs and sturdy shoes, his hair is trimmed short, his beard clipped close enough Staci can see the pink of his skin underneath. There’s more gray in his beard now than there was at the trial.

The instructions Staci had to read when he arrived at the prison are vivid in his mind. They’re allowed to touch at the beginning, and before Staci leaves. Handshakes and hugs and a brief kiss are all fine. Staci still hasn’t settled on what he wants.

Shaking Jacob’s hand seems too weird. And he doesn’t want to hug him, much less kiss. Jacob’s face remains stoic, as Staci sits across from him, offering nothing, sticking his hands between his legs after he sits down, clamping his thighs around them to keep warm.

“You came,” Jacob says, awe leaking into his voice. He didn’t expect Staci to actually show up.

“Yeah,” Staci responds, his eyes flicking to the guard in the corner of the room. He looks bored, more than anything else. Probably spends all day watching scenes like this one. “I did.”

“You look good,” Jacob follows up, though Staci can’t detect any surprise. “How long are you staying?”

“I don’t know? Aren’t these timed?” Staci asks. No one told him how long he was allowed to stay.

Jacob smiles back at him, “I don’t know. Haven’t had a visitor yet. But I meant in Colorado.”

Staci blinks, then tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling, “Oh.” 

He’s surprised, he guesses, that no one has been to see Jacob. Staci really didn’t look into what happened to Jacob’s children after the collapse of the cult. A lot of the surviving Peggies didn’t have charges brought against them. Most of them never really did anything illegal other than get duped by Joseph Seed. Did they just…try to return to normal lives like Staci did? Go to work, spend time with their families, live and fuck and die, not thinking about Eden’s Gate as much more than a strange, waking dream? Did they get off easier than Staci? Probably. Probably don’t want their kids around Jacob anymore. Probably better if they forget. Jacob wasn’t around much for them anyway. Even if having Jacob Seed’s children was a point of pride while those omegas were in the cult.

“I’ve been here for awhile,” Staci explains, “since before you were transferred. Caleb moved when John did. And...after Sheriff Whitehorse died, I don’t know.”

“You didn’t want to be alone?” Jacob supplies.

“Yeah.”

“That’s good,” Jacob’s posture doesn’t falter, staying straight-backed in his chair, hands flat on the tops of his thighs, long, gnarled fingers slightly curved around his own legs. “I’m glad you have someone.”

Staci isn’t about to explain that he and Caleb aren’t fucking. Hell, Jacob, maybe more than anyone, should know. He’s the one who had the bright idea of using Staci’s heat as bait, and had to deal with the frustration of his plan spectacularly failing. Really blowing up in his fucking face when it turned out that Caleb was just wild about his brother.

“I still don’t know how to feel, if seeing you was right,” Staci says, his leg bouncing up and down. His eyes dart across the room, because it’s becoming increasingly apparent that even without their fucking scents, Jacob’s presence is still haunting, captivating, brushing up against something fragile inside Staci. That thing that has led to traitorous thoughts. That maybe, had their lives gone differently, Staci might have chosen Jacob himself. Might have _wanted_ him. Though the mere idea now feels sour, foul. 

Jacob’s mouth moves, however slightly, eyes narrowing. “I don’t expect there to be a ‘right,’ Pratt.”

No, not after so many wrongs packed together, shoved down Staci’s throat past the point of bursting. Coming today is just another morsel, even if it’s one Staci chose to swallow.

Staci laughs, “I still think I would beat the shit out of you, if I could.” Staci winces, when the guard looks up at him. He shouldn’t have said that.

That’s enough, Staci decides. He feels light-headed, floaty and detached from his body. He tells the guard he’s ready to leave. When he stands up, Jacob stands too, arms at his sides. They’re close enough they could touch. Staci thinks maybe he wants that. He wants Jacob to touch him now. Not to remember, but to compare. 

Jacob takes half a step closer, his scrubs smell like starch. His fingers press gently into Staci’s cheek and he dips his head just enough that their lips brush against each other before pulling back.

“That’s what you wanted?” he asks softly.

Staci nods before he can stop himself.

\--

Back at the house, Delilah basically passes out. Going to see John tends to overstimulate her, and she usually ends up sleeping through dinner.

Staci sits on the couch, his feet up on the cushions while he and Caleb wait for the Thai they ordered to arrive. On his phone, Staci googles “effectiveness of chemical divorce” and scans through the first couple of results. WebMD is always the fucking worst and will probably make Staci think he’s got cancer. There’s a result from some sort of online help group for people who have been through the process. Staci clicks that link to see if there’s anything at all useful. Most of the replies are just people talking about their own experiences. But one of them has a couple of links to government sponsored research on the drugs most commonly used. Staci groans, he doesn’t even actually know what he and Jacob took. They were just the syringes that Caleb managed to find for them in the ransacked pharmacy.

Copying each prescription name, for the ones labeled as “injectable,” Staci tries to figure out what he took from pictures of syringes. After comparing the two closest, he’s pretty sure they used the one branded Dirumvada. Going back to the list of studies, he picks out the right one. 

Staci can’t pretend that he makes sense of everything in the paper, it’s all in like, specialized language he can’t figure out. So then he tries searching for “effectiveness of Dirumvada” in Google and finds that the company’s site claims 67% effectiveness within the first seventy-two hours, and 99.6% total breakage of the bond within two weeks. There’s a whole list of short-term side effects, none of which Staci could claim to have had. He got fucking shot in the arm with an actual bullet the morning after he took the dose, and was coming down off of a fucking terrifying Bliss high on top of that. He had fucking side effects from Hope County that kind of overshadowed everything else. 

There’s a warning that in an anticipated 3% of cases for omegas, and 4% in alphas, the drug may prevent a future bonding with another partner. Staci doesn’t care about that. He can barely stand the idea of another Alpha who isn’t Caleb touching him, much less bonding. And even before all of this, he wasn’t the type to settle down. He just wants to know in how many cases does the bond fail to break, and what the fuck he’s supposed to do if that’s happened to him.

Buried on the site, he finds a single statement that in 4% of omegas, and 2% of alphas, the injection alone may not be successful and Staci gets dizzy thinking about that 2% gap between them.

“You’re touching your neck,” Caleb says from where he’s sitting at the kitchen island. Just then, the doorbell rings.

\--

Staci makes an appointment with a doctor. He doesn’t really have “a doctor” in Colorado yet, even though the insurance that comes with his job is supposed to be pretty good. When he calls to schedule, the receptionist asks him who he’d like to see. He tells her he doesn’t care. She asks for his gender, dynamic, and age and he rattles them off, cis-male, cis-omega, twenty-nine. 

“Do you have any particular concerns?” she asks.

“Um, I’d rather talk about that with the doctor...if that’s okay.”

She says that’s fine, but knowing might help her make a more appropriate match. Staci tells her that’s okay. He’d rather just talk about it with the doctor.

At the appointment, one of the nurses takes his height, his weight, his blood pressure. Asks Staci all the standard questions. Does he smoke? Not really. Drink? Two or three times a week. Other substances? It’s Colorado...but maybe just twice a month, in gummy form. 

“It’s kind of complicated, though,” Staci admits. “But that’s all I do now.”

The nurse asks about birth control and suppressants. Staci pulls out his prescription bottle that his last doctor forwarded to a pharmacy near his new address, since he was going to be gone awhile. And explains that he’s supposed to have three more years to go on his IUD before it needs to be replaced.

He ends up with Dr. Burke, a heavy-set omega in her fifties nearly three inches taller than Staci with soft-looking, graying hair and a thin smile. She wears reading glasses on the top of her head, and when she tries to pull them down to read the notes the nurse left for her, the nosepad gets tangled in her hair.

“Complicated, eh?” she asks.

“That’s one way of putting it….you remember the story about Eden’s Gate, Hope County Montana?”

She frowns, “You were there?”

Staci almost tells her just to look him up, but instead explains, “Not in the cult, I was...one of the deputies involved in the incident. Um, it...depends how much you remember.”

“Oh,” her mouth forms a gentle circle, “I...don’t want to assume.”

Staci grits his teeth, “I was the omega Jacob Seed bonded,” he doesn’t add ‘by force,’ though that’s what the assumption has always been. Staci was so addled with his fucking heat at the time that he can’t claim to really remember what happened. Even if he asked for Jacob’s bite, he couldn’t really consent. Not under those conditions. But he still can’t say if he asked or not.

“Oh,” she repeats, holding polite eye contact. 

Staci looks away. “I’m worried that the pharm I used to break the bond didn’t work properly. I...I didn’t know what I was doing really. I read the instructions on the package at the time. But it wasn’t...prescribed for me or anything.” He stares at the wall instead of looking at the doctor. “And I didn’t say anything at the hospital. I didn’t say anything until the trial when the prosecutor said it was important. I just….”

Dr. Burke gives him space to breathe before assuring him it’s _okay._ What is in the past is in the past. And they’ll figure out what’s going on. “You’re certain the Alpha took his dose?”

“Yes,” that much, Staci remembers clearly, “I took it first, but I watched him take it. I’m sure.”

She asks him what they took and he tells her he’s pretty sure it was Dirumvada, but he can’t say 100% that’s it. Scribbling down her notes, she says that she’s going to draw blood and then take things from there. It will take a few days for the lab tests to come back. But someone will call him with the results.

Before she takes the blood, she asks if Staci wants to have his pelvic exam while he’s here? He declines, saying he’d rather not. Not now. She asks about STD screens and Staci says those were at least done when his bullet wound was treated the morning after they made it to Helena. Then again, three months later, when his hormone levels were checked after going back on suppressants.

She offers a referral for someone local he could talk to. Staci takes the slip of paper with no intention of calling for an appointment.

—

Caleb doesn’t ask Staci if he wants to go to visiting hours again. He just wraps Delilah up in coats, carrying her out to the car. She likes to scream a lot now. And Caleb never forces her to be quiet. He just laughs and screams right back, delighted that she’s so spirited.

—

The doctor’s office calls. Staci’s blood test comes back normal. His cholesterol is a little high. But there’s no evidence of a bond.

“Okay, thanks,” he replies, and the nurse tries to schedule another appointment to discuss other reasons Staci might feel uneasy. Staci declines as politely as he can, saying that’s fine. He has his answer. He’s not concerned. But if they could renew his suppressant prescription that would be great. He gives the address of the nearest pharmacy and hangs up.

—

Caleb buys Delilah a hat with fox ears that stick straight up. She loves it, pawing at it with her tiny hands and grabbing at the ears while Caleb tries to corral her into her puffy coat.

She looks more and more like John Seed every day. He’s in her eyes, her smile, her rosy cheeks and dark hair. And maybe, Staci starts to see a little bit what Jacob meant, when he said John was once sweet.

“I’m coming with you,” Staci says. He called on Tuesday, after he got his test results back.

Caleb smiles at him, telling him “sure, okay,” and scooping Delilah up.

—

Staci enters the visiting room the second time the same way as the first. He doesn’t reach out to touch Jacob, still not knowing what to do.

When he starts to speak, he’s so keenly aware of the guard in the corner of the room that he halts, licking against his lips before deciding he must press on.

“Pratt?” Jacob asks, scratching against his jaw, “I’m...glad you came again.”

“I went to the doctor,” Staci blurts out, “to check...I wasn’t sure about the bond.” His head swims, “but it’s fine, it’s okay. It’s broken.”

Jacob frowns, his hands back on the tops of his thighs, “I know.”

“Right,” Staci stutters, “right.”

Jacob asks Staci to tell him about his job? Staci takes the opportunity to describe in excruciating detail how mundane his job really is. Jacob listens intently as Staci tells the story about the professor who locks himself out of his own classroom at least twice a week, sometimes with his students inside. And no matter how many times Staci reminds him that he could just knock to have his students let him back in, he always comes to the front desk for help.

Jacob almost smiles as Staci talks, the expression tenuous at the corners of his mouth. With his fucking dumb as shit story over, Staci huffs, clenching his hands in the extra fabric of his sweater.

“It looks good on you,” Jacob comments, referring to the sweater.

“Caleb bought it for me,” Staci responds on autopilot, still pulling at the hem. While Jacob listens, Staci goes on about Caleb learning how to cook, sort of. And how Staci bought an xbox and he’s been playing Call of Duty, but it’s real strange, mowing down digital bodies in the game after what he’s lived through. But there’s a weird sort of catharsis in it too.

When Staci has to go, they both stand up again. Staci reaches out to touch Jacob, putting his palm flat against the center of his chest and pressing down. Jacob wraps both his hands around Staci’s wrist, thumbing against the skin just exposed as the sleeve of his sweater falls back. Leaning in, Jacob kisses Staci’s cheek, whispering quickly that next time, he should request a conjugal. When Staci tenses, Jacob quickly follows up, “I won’t touch you, but we can speak alone.”

Exhaling loudly, Staci says, “Okay, okay,” and pulls his hand back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s up my guys. I update too frequently but here I am on my bullshit again.

Staci is told to expect a few weeks’ wait as he goes through another round of approvals. Someone in Pennsylvania calls again, but it’s not the same man as before. She asks questions about Staci and Jacob’s terminated bond. Staci gives answers that are equal parts true and evasive, “we were both...under stress.”

“When the bond was made or when it was broken?”

“Both,” he doesn’t add ‘we still are.’

Before she hangs up, she says he’ll receive written confirmation of his approval or rejection.

—

Caleb comes home from work to find Staci on the couch, Delilah passed out on his chest. She apparently was rambunctious at daycare, and Caleb has always made it clear that she can sleep when she’s tired, get up when she’s awake. Honestly, Staci doesn’t know any better about whether they should try to get her to sleep on a regular schedule. But this kind of feels wrong?

Reaching over the back of the couch, Caleb scoops her up. Staci catches a flash of gold on Caleb’s ring finger and doesn’t bother to be embarrassed to ask about it.

“So people will stop asking,” Caleb explains. “I’m getting tired of giving answers.”

—

Staci calls Joey, the next time Caleb is out with Delilah. Tomorrow, the three of them are going Christmas shopping. 

On the phone, he doesn’t mention Jacob. But he’s honest about living with Caleb. He doesn’t say anything about Delilah.

“Are you two…” Joey asks, and it almost sounds like there’s hope simmering there. Like Caleb has finally let go of the dream/nightmare that is his inexplicable, impossible love for John Seed.

“No,” Staci cuts her off, before she says something weird and callous about Alphas and Omegas. “How are you, though?”

She’s finished at the police academy now, has her beat assignment in Irvine. Weird, to start all over after already been a deputy for years. But it’s different. And she’s glad she put herself through the process. She feels better now, stronger and more alert. Capable. This is what she needed, to be able to throw herself into work. Staci feeds her small affirmations as she speaks, honestly glad that she’s doing so well.

“Have you seen Grace?” she asks, just when Staci thinks their conversation is winding down.

Staci admits, “No, not since I left Montana.” Not really before then either, just in passing.

“Guess that makes sense.”

“You could call her, Joey.”

“No, no that’s okay. I made my decision,” she says with a sense of finality that Staci knows is false.

—

Staci’s building has a “Holiday” party before the building closes for the week between Christmas and the New Year. The students finished their semester a week ago, so it’s just staff and lingering faculty trying to finish up projects while they don’t have classes to teach.

He doesn’t intend to actually go to the party, but it’s held in the conference room just back and to the left of the front desk. Sounds of excitement get louder after the first twenty minutes, and he can smell the catering. Greasy finger foods from the Italian place down the block. Staci tries to look busy enough that when people leave for the bathroom in talkative packs, they don’t try and disturb him, but that can only last so long.

“Hey, Staci!” 

Turning to look at who called him, Staci already knows it’s Dr. Graham, an assistant professor in his early thirties, fresh from his anthropology doctorate. At the beginning of the semester, Staci gave him his keys. Since then, they’ve greeted each other when Dr. Graham enters and exits the building. But not really spoken much other than that.

“Professor?” Staci asks. It’s pretty clear that Dr. Graham has been drinking a little, the tops of his ears are pink. He wears his blond hair so short that Staci can practically see his scalp. He has a flask in one hand, but it’s sealed. There’s wine at the party, but apparently he wanted something stronger for the occasion.

Dr. Graham holds out the flask to Staci, smiling brightly, “Want some? Or I could bring you something?”

“Oh,” Staci puts down his phone, because it’s polite. He wasn’t really looking at anything that interesting really. “I’m okay.”

Leaning forward, Dr. Graham rests his forearms on Staci’s station. The desk is elevated, but Dr. Graham is an alpha with a pretty typical build. Not as tall as Caleb, but firmly over six feet, with broad shoulders and thick arms. 

“You should come enjoy yourself. I know for a fact staff has been excused for the afternoon.” He smiles, looking up at Staci through his lashes. “I’d like to get to know you.”

There’s nothing at all lecherous in Dr. Graham’s tone, but he’s dropping enough polite hints about it that Staci doesn’t miss his meaning. Still, Staci is so unused to being flirted with now, he seizes up, staring back at the professor blankly. Before Hope County, Staci would have relished at the attention, maybe suggested skipping conversation and the party to get right to the sex. Staci liked sex, _loved_ it. The attention and affection and the power to make a partner come. But now, he feels nothing when he looks at Dr. Graham. 

And Dr. Graham looks good. He honestly does. He’s successful, if a little dorky, but in a charming sort of way. Staci knows he must be smart, and he’s never been anything but polite, which can’t be said of all the other professors in the building.

“I’m sorry,” Staci stumbles, “I’m not interested.”

“Oh,” Dr. Graham rocks back, picking up his arms and standing straight. “Sorry then, just thought I’d try….you’re so pretty. Ah, but you can still come have a drink? Or something to eat. The food is pretty good. A little cold now. I’ll be on good behavior, promise.”

Staci gives him a weak smile and says that’s okay. He should head home soon. Dr. Graham waves as he turns to leave, his face redder than it was when he first came over.

Pulling on his coat, Staci leaves to pick up Delilah early.

—

Since the cold weather has hit, Caleb and Staci mostly sleep curled together, Staci’s back to Caleb’s chest and Caleb’s arm thrown across Staci’s waist. There’s a comfort in their closeness, even if sometimes Caleb lightly snores. Delilah still sleeps in the master bedroom in her crib. But Caleb has started showing Staci toddler beds and other ideas for her moving into the second bedroom.

Though it’s probably still awhile off, Staci worries about how they’ll explain to her...everything. God. She’s not even Staci’s kid but he’s a big part of her life now. And maybe, might, will be, for a long time to come. But there are so many more things she’ll have to somehow understand, that are way more confusing than why Caleb and Staci share a bed.

Like why her other father is in fucking prison, and Caleb has his greatest sin inked across his chest.

“Caleb,” Staci whispers into the darkness, careful not to wake Delilah.

“Yeah, Stace?” He sounds a little groggy, in between sleep and waking.

“I uh...went through the process, to have a private visit with Jacob.” Staci can’t bear to call it a conjugal. That’s...not what they’ll be doing.

Caleb’s arm tightens around Staci’s waist, “Oh…”

“I just wanted to talk to him without the guard...I was approved earlier this week.”

“Mmm,” Caleb hums against his neck, “bond will get you anything. Broken or not.”

Staci thinks back to that morning, before they drove out to Joseph’s compound in the early dawn. “That’s why you bit him…”

“I bit John because I love him,” Caleb sighs, “everyone thinks I’m fucking crazy.”

“I don’t,” Staci says sincerely. He thinks Caleb is reckless and terrifying, braver than any other man could hope to be, and on the verge of bursting into a thousand pieces. But he doesn’t think Caleb Nylander is crazy. “Sometimes I wish...that it would...easier.”

“Easier?”

“To know what I want. To not have to second guess. That I could trust what I feel...and not worry about...god,” he’s crying now, his chest rapidly expanding and contracting. Caleb kisses the top of his head, murmuring it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay that they’re not okay.

Caleb falls back to sleep before Staci cries himself out. But Staci wouldn’t dare hold that against him.

—

The procedure is different, Staci is quickly shuttled off to a different waiting area. He sits alone in the smaller room with half a dozen fabric-backed chairs and tile floors. It’s two days before Christmas, and Staci is sure that the other room must be bursting at the seams with visitors.

A guard comes through, gesturing for Staci to follow him. He lets Staci into a narrow changing room with a mirror and a sink. A set of scrubs similar to those Jacob always wears, but in a darker blue, lays folded on the vanity. The guard asks him his shoe size and tells Staci to get changed. Everything else he’s wearing, undergarments included will be safely locked inside the room.

Staci nods and the guard closes the door. His hands shake as he strips, trying not to see himself in the mirror. It’s not that he avoids mirrors normally. Not when it comes to his face. But right now the idea of seeing his own body makes him feel strange.

The scrubs fit alright. The guard did a good job of guessing his size. There’s a knock at the door and Staci says he’s changed. The guard opens the door back up and hands him a pair of slip on shoes to wear.

After locking the door behind Staci, the guard leads him to the next room. As always, Jacob is there before him, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands curled over the tops of his thighs.

The room is sparse, bed with fresh sheets, a sink, tile floor, no windows. But the walls are painted cream. There’s something small, comforting about that.

Staci sits next to Jacob, because there’s no other seating in the room. There’s enough of a gap between them that they don’t touch. But Staci can feel the heat radiating from Jacob’s side.

“I’m glad you came,” Jacob says, again. As if there is no other greeting in the world.

“Do they listen in on us?” Staci asks, “I asked Caleb about it. He doesn’t think so...but.”

“He would know better than me,” Jacob says. “Pratt…”

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Staci snaps, his lips pulling back from his teeth. He feels strange, feral in a way he hasn’t since his suppressants kicked back in. The dizziness is back, making his head swim. But Jacob doesn’t even flinch. “I don’t know why I can’t stay away. Or how I can hate you, and want to be here at the same fucking time.”

Staci stands up, too giddy with frustration. He starts to pace the room, tearing at his hair. 

“I thought maybe, maybe the bond wasn’t broken. That somehow we fucked it up. But the doctor said it’s gone. There’s nothing left. Nothing left but _you_.” Staci huffs, remembering what he once told Joey, “you ruined me. And I can’t fix it.”

Jacob’s expression gives nothing away, his lips in a straight line, eyes bright and clear, making the blue of his scrubs look dull. Saying nothing, he stares at Staci, as if waiting for something more. Waiting for the last thread of Staci’s composure to snap with the tension he’s been teasing out for so long. Like maybe, if Staci pushes himself over the edge, Jacob can absolve himself in careful touches and sweet words.

“I don’t understand you,” Jacob finally admits. “I never have.”

Staci hiccups through his tears, trying to fight his way back to composure. “Fuck you. What have you ever understood?” He doesn’t mean for Jacob to answer his question.

“Terror, failure, survival,” Jacob lists. “Even now, I’m alive, aren’t I?”

Snickering, Staci looks up at the ceiling, crossing his arms over his chest, “I guess you fucking are.”

“That much I do understand,” Jacob starts to seethe, frustration curling through his syllables. “That you’re a survivor too. A crybaby, scatterbrained, and small. But look what you did, put the big bad wolf in a cage.”

At Jacob’s admission, Staci snaps to attention, finally able to look Jacob properly in the eyes. That’s _right_ , Staci _won._ Jacob had every intention of getting Staci gobbled up like feed. If not by Caleb, then Jacob was ready to finish the job himself. And he tried and he failed. Staci is still _here_.

“For life,” Staci snarls, meaning to cut with his teeth and words. “You’re never fucking getting out.”

That might not technically be true. There are parole conditions on some of Jacob’s charges. And his two life sentences are concurrent, not consecutive. Through some circuitous legal wrangling, there might be someone capable of getting Jacob out of prison. But not anytime fucking soon.

“You sure of that?”

Staci can still hear ‘Peaches,’ even if Jacob never calls him that anymore. Not since Staci called Jacob out on his obvious tell. But even so, Staci knows he’s hit a nerve. That he’s still able to make Jacob squirm.

And he fucking loves the power. Goes straight to his head. And his dick. Made him reckless three years ago, when he fucked Jacob in that farmhouse full of Jacob’s fiercest enemies, just to prove he could. That he could take what he wanted and cut off the rest like a gangrenous limb.

“Yeah,” Staci says with swagger between his lips, “I’m sure.”

Jacob stands up from the mattress, and Staci doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move a fucking muscle as Jacob takes the three steps to stalk towards him. Jacob said he wouldn’t touch him, but grabs Staci’s hip anyway. His big hand curling around the bone. Jacob smells of soap and starch, not a hint of the open air. The scent of grass and trees and their battered down _home_. Built of tinder and ready to ignite, but _theirs_ in the tenuous, chaotic weeks they were bonded.

Staci touches Jacob’s shirt sleeve, the fabric ugly, synthetic under his fingertips. He hums as Jacob dips his head to press his nose into Staci’s hair. He washed it this morning, letting it curl in its natural waves. The warmth that thrums through Jacob’s body is palpable, thudding in the air around them.

“You never stopped smelling like mine,” Jacob says. Breathing deeply, his hand clamps down harder around Staci’s hip. Like he’s afraid Staci might slip through his fingers.

Staci laughs, “We’re not bonded, I’m suppressed. And you’re a fucking liar.”

“Am I?” Jacob questions, thumbing underneath Staci’s chin, raising it so their eyes can meet. “Did I lie to you? No doubt, I’m a sinner, wretched and unworthy. But did I lie? I said I’d keep you safe. That I wouldn’t let Joseph touch you. And here you are.”

Sliding his hands underneath the hem of Jacob’s scrubs, Staci touches against his abdomen, hard and scarred. Staci drags his fingers along where Jacob’s sins have been sliced into his skin. Jacob tenses his stomach as Staci strokes, rucking up the fabric around his wrists.

Jacob says nothing as Staci winds his hands around Jacob’s back, pressing against his lower spine.

“Tell me, Pratt,” Jacob smirks, but there’s a strange, haunting uncertainty in his eyes. “How many have had you, since then?”

Recoiling, Staci snatches his hands back. He twists out of Jacob’s grip, heading to the door to press the switch that indicates to the guards that they’re done.


	4. Chapter 4

Caleb doesn’t unpack the plastic and wire tree from its cardboard box until Christmas Eve. Staci lets him struggle with assembling it for a solid ten minutes before offering to switch places. Caleb huffs, standing up and reaching out his arms to take Delilah from Staci.

Sitting on the floor, Staci pulls out the instructions Caleb didn’t so much as glance at. The tree itself smells like powdery oil. Assembly is terribly easy after actually reading the instructions. Caleb just didn’t understand how the latches on the pole were meant to slot together before locking into place.

Once the tree is up, Caleb settles Delilah down on the floor and grabs the giant plastic bag of decorations he bought from Walmart. There’s way too much, given the petite size of the tree, lights and strings of tinsel and glass baubles, all in their original packaging.

“Do you go to Church on Christmas?” Caleb asks, busying himself with the lights. “I guess I should have asked you sooner.”

Staci sits down with Delilah on the floor, his knees pulled to his chest so he can rest his chin on them. Staci’s been baptized, confirmed, the whole lot. But stopped attending mass when his mother couldn’t force him anymore. “No, why, do you?”

“Yeah, no, I mean,” Caleb frowns, the string lights already tangled around his fingers. “I used to go to church all the time. Like, every week. But since...God...everything. I haven’t been back. And it fucking pisses me off.” He shakes his head, “that something that meant so much to me could be ruined. And then I wonder, if this was just God testing me? And I failed. I failed because I couldn’t believe in Him after watching how Joseph Seed perverted his message. Not once, not ever did I believe Joseph was right. But still...every time I pass...I can’t bear to go inside.”

Staci didn’t know. He honestly didn’t. It never once occurred to him that Caleb would be devout. Staci believes in God, of course he does. Even if the rituals he grew up with, Saints and Icons and Sacrament, feel silly and extravagant and outdated. But Hope County wasn’t the start, or the end, of his belief. 

“Do you want to go?” Staci asks, “you want to take Delilah…”

“No matter what I do, she’s going to learn. She’s going to learn who she is, and where she came from. I want her to know John, I want her to love him as much as John loves her. Even if I...tried to disappear with her, she would know. Wouldn’t she? Someone would find out. Spread it around. I figure...it’s better to teach her to be unashamed. To fight, instead of cower when someone says she’s John Seed’s daughter.”

“But?” Staci pokes at her, picking her up and putting her in his lap. She squirms around to grab at his sweater.

“I want her to know that God is good and kind and merciful and loves her so much. But how do I do that, when her family hurt so many people in His name?”

Staci hopes Caleb doesn’t expect an answer.

After lunch, Staci looks up “Lutheran churches in Colorado Springs,” on his phone. He tries adding “Swedish” to the search results, but they don’t help much. Handing the phone to Caleb, he says that he should pick one and they’ll go.

“Lutherans aren’t weird, right?” Staci asks. “Like, I’m not going to hell for being a ‘papist?’”

Caleb smiles, “We just won’t tell them. And as if, considering everything else we’ve done, that would be their problem.”

“Hey, I thought you believed God was good and kind and merciful?”

“I do,” Caleb responds with all seriousness. “But I don’t believe men are any of those things by nature.”

—

Staci doesn’t call the prison to arrange for a New Year’s visit. Caleb readies Delilah as usual, sticking her hat on first because she’s far more compliant when she gets her way from the start. Once she’s ready, Caleb asks Staci if he’s coming? 

No. 

Caleb tells Delilah to wave goodbye and promises to be home in time for dinner.

There’s two bottles of champagne Caleb bought for them to drink in the fridge. At a minute after noon, Staci pops the first one open, drinking out of a coffee cup while he plays on his console. He starts out on the couch, but eventually slides down on the floor with his back against the sofa’s edge and legs splayed out in front of him. Round after round, he does well enough that he doesn’t suffer any particular verbal abuse from the other players. Even as his head starts to spin a little from the champagne, he keeps up alright.

Caleb and Delilah make it home halfway through the bottle. There’s leftover pizza already in the fridge so neither of them have to worry about cooking. Caleb puts Delilah to bed before coming back out to the kitchen to stick two slices on each plate and pour a mug of champagne for himself.

“Just couldn’t wait for me?” he teases Staci, sitting down on the floor next to him and bumping their shoulders together.

Staci’s in the middle of a round and Caleb rips up a bite-sized piece of pizza with his fingers and sticks it into Staci’s mouth.

Once the round is over, Staci doesn’t bother queuing up again. Neither of them are willing to move from their place on the floor. And Caleb only gets up when they polish off the first bottle and he has to go and grab the second. Forcing himself to slow down a little, Staci lets Caleb have his way with the second bottle. But he’s already feeling loose and floaty by the time Caleb stands up again to get the gummies out of the fridge.

Caleb bites down halfway through one of them, before coaxing Staci to “open,” and putting the other half past his lips. Staci rakes his tongue along Caleb’s fingers, licking away the sugar clinging to his skin.

Laughing, Caleb throws his arm over Staci’s shoulders, nuzzling against the side of his neck and encouraging him to queue up again. Caleb wants to watch him play. Staci already feels too fucked up from drinking to be any good, but he starts another round.

“You’re so good,” Caleb purrs. Really though, Staci is playing like shit. Caleb just doesn’t understand how scoring works well enough to realize that. “You’re so good to me.”

Staci doesn’t fight it as Caleb lays him out on the floor, controller forgotten and the background music still buzzing. The carpet laid across the hardwood feels rough against Staci’s back as his sweater pulls away from the waistband of his pants.

Caleb doesn’t try to kiss him, or touch him in a way that is particularly obscene, but he lays his hands over top of Staci’s wrists, pinning them on either side of Staci’s head.

“Stace…” he says, gently grinding his hips between Staci’s legs. “Are you happy?” He kisses Staci’s neck, closed-mouth and dry, on the opposite side of where Jacob’s mark used to stain his skin.

Arching up, however slightly, Staci tries to formulate a response. He likes the friction, he likes Caleb’s warmth. He likes the miming of desire, even if it’s not real. Maybe because it’s not.

“I want to make you happy,” Caleb gasps, the beginnings of his erection rubbing against the seam of his jeans as he grinds against Staci’s leg. “I can’t...I can’t make John happy. I…”

Staci brushes his fingers through Caleb’s beard, up to his cheek. “It’s okay, Caleb.” He shudders, knowing how he has to stop this now. But Caleb knows too, dropping his head down to the junction of Staci’s neck and shoulder, he stops moving his hips.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Staci responds. “You didn’t do anything worth apologizing for.” Reaching up, he runs his fingers through Caleb’s hair.

—

As Jacob’s niece, clearing Delilah for visitation privileges is easy, as long as she’s accompanied by an adult. Caleb calls the office in Pennsylvania, but by the end of the conversation he concludes that it’s very unlikely that he would be approved. Under different circumstances, as the mate of Jacob’s brother, it should be relatively easy. But since said brother is incarcerated for related criminal activities, there’s a risk of passing information.

Caleb has this conversation with Staci in the room. He’s on the floor, playing with Delilah with these plastic model cars that Caleb bought for her. At least Caleb has the good sense not to point out that he and Staci live together, and this whole thing is a clusterfuck from start to finish.

After hanging up, Caleb flops down onto the couch. “No paperwork needed for Delilah. Since, you know, she’s two.” Really more like two and a half, and that makes a difference at her age.

“Okay,” Staci replies. He hasn’t gone to see Jacob since the ‘conjugal.’ Unwilling to show his face, to give Jacob the pleasure of taunting him again. And maybe, without Delilah in the picture, Staci could just as well never go back. But some dark, terrible part of himself knows that that’s not true. Staci would be sure to falter, to give in, eventually.

Staci gives it a couple days before he calls the prison, to say that he’d like to see Jacob, and that he’s bringing Delilah Nylander, Jacob’s niece. The receptionist says to hold on a second while she checks the database, then tells Staci he’s all set. Since she’s under five, the inmate is allowed to hold her on his lap, if they’d like. 

Thanking her for confirming, Staci hangs up, goes back to the game he was playing on his phone. Classes are back in session, so every fifty minutes he’s got ten minutes of semi-active work, scanning the crowd of kids entering and leaving the building, more or less figuring out if there’s anything amiss.

Dr. Graham comes through the doors halfway through the ten o’clock hour. He teaches at eleven this semester. In his navy peacoat and striped slacks, he looks handsome, put together. His hair is a little longer now. Maybe he hasn’t had time to buzz it back down. He waves at Staci on his way to the office and Staci waves back, wondering if it would really be to bad to let someone touch him, if only to throw it back in Jacob’s face.

Staci makes a show of smiling more brightly than normal. He thinks Dr. Graham notices, when he smiles back. There isn’t much time until his class, so he doesn’t stop to chat. But Staci is pretty sure he’s planted the idea in his head that Staci might not be as closed off as before the break.

Between lectures, Dr. Graham—Marcus, comes back to the front desk. Underneath the peacoat, he is dressed in a button down with a gray argyle sweater vest over top. It’s completely and totally on the nose for a young professor. Most of the professors in the building dress much more casually.

Marcus asks Staci how he’s doing, if he had a nice holiday? Staci doesn’t want to give non-committal answers, so he shares that he went to service with his friend and his friend’s daughter. Lighting up, Marcus shares that he has a big family back in New York. Got to fly out to see them for a bit on break. 

Everything is completely pleasant and it’s the normalcy that makes Staci’s skin itch. He wants to scream, ‘don’t you know? Don’t you know I’m fucked up, beyond the point of kindness or repair?’

Marcus asks Staci if he wants to get a drink, sometime after work? He doesn’t lecture on Fridays, but he would be more than happy to pick Staci up once he’s finished for the week? He does the typical Alpha thing of promising to take care of everything and Staci has always liked that. He never minded being more aggressive with Betas and other Omegas, but if he’s _going to_ go out with an Alpha, he might as well reap the benefits, have the full experience. 

Staci says yes, his shift ends at four. He’s still...unsure. Almost panicked, but he keeps repeating to himself that Marcus is nice and polite and will definitely be fine if Staci doesn’t want to move fast, or move at all. Going out to drinks doesn’t mean he has to let Marcus touch him.

He texts Caleb right away that he has a date on Friday and he’ll have to get Delilah from daycare. Caleb texts back a bunch of hearts and says that’s great. It’s not a problem. Does he still want to take Delilah to see Jacob on Saturday or should he get a sitter?

Fuck. Right. Caleb probably scheduled a conjugal with John, knowing that Staci would take care of Delilah.

He texts back that he’ll be home Friday night, no need to change their plans.

—

Marcus’ car isn’t super fancy or anything, but it’s a nice, older Mercedes that he explains his parents helped him buy after he finished college. Worth the money, he thinks, since it’s still in good condition and gets him where he needs to go.

Staci plops himself down in the passenger seat. He had Caleb drop him off at work today so he wouldn’t have to leave his car overnight in the campus lot. 

“I made reservations for dinner at five,” Marcus explains, pulling out onto the main drag. “It’s not too far from my apartment. If that’s alright?”

“Oh, yeah that’s fine,” Staci thinks for a moment how ridiculous it would be for him to worry about Marcus driving drunk after having been in a car with Caleb when he was fucked up on enough chems to kill a bear. As in...both that volume of injectables would cause a bear to keel over and die and that Caleb could have straight up murdered a bear with his hands.

Dinner is nice, possibly nicer than anywhere else Staci has ever been taken. Because even though he’d gone through this song and dance a bunch of times in his early 20s, there weren’t a ton of options in rural Montana. Colorado Springs isn’t exactly a bastion of culture either, but it’s definitely more developed overall. Staci feels terribly underdressed.

Over wine and steak and candle-cast shadows Marcus tries to coax Staci to talk about himself. Staci knows he’s spectacularly failing to open up, and he can’t even attribute it to what he’s gone through. He was never particularly comfortable sharing himself with those people he mostly saw for sex. His friends? Yeah, sure. But why does someone need to know about his dad’s death when he was seventeen or how he played soccer in high school but was never that good, or how he decided to become a sheriff’s deputy, which inevitably would lead to why he’s working the front desk at a college campus and lives with an Alpha who isn’t his and picks up a little girl from daycare with haunted eyes.

Staci can’t bring himself to tell Marcus anything.

So he tries to get Marcus to talk instead. Staci has enough experience now getting professors to make some level of polite conversation. He asks Marcus about his research, which is mostly focused on Alpha/Beta courting rituals.

Staci lets it slip that one of his best friends was in an Alpha/Beta relationship that didn’t work out, when Marcus comments that in most cases, Betas tend to be the ones to break off the relationship. Mercifully, Marcus doesn’t ask for details on why the relationship failed, but latches on to the idea that Staci as a best friend.

“I mean, we used to work together, in Montana...we don’t talk that much anymore.”

Marcus presses again, asking Staci about why he moved to Colorado. Not wanting to fuck this completely up, he admits that he moved to be with a friend, when his mentor died.

Trying to take control of the conversation, Staci asks Marcus if he prefers relationships with Betas, given his research interests. Marcus laughs, admitting, “No, not really I...I’m a horrible traditionalist I’m afraid.”

Staci polishes off his wine, already feeling pleasantly buzzed before Marcus takes the check from their server, paying in cash and hurrying up to help Staci up out of his chair. Then again helping Staci with his jacket at coat check.

“There’s a bar just up the street,” Marcus points in the direction once they’re outside. “If you’d like to have another drink.”

“I’m not much for crowds,” Staci pulls out a line he’s used before, one that feels rote and easy to expel, “wouldn’t say no to a drink someplace quieter, though?”

Marcus smiles, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat, “I think I can manage that.”

Sticking his elbow out, Marcus offers Staci his arm to take. Staci is careful not to give away that he notices the gesture, sticking close to Marcus’ side without touching. They make it to Marcus’ building, one with a doorman and everything, even if the lobby is a little run down, it’s still nice.

In the elevator, Marcus runs his hand down Staci’s side, telling him, “Relax, it’s just a drink. I don’t expect anything.”

Staci knows that. He wouldn’t even put himself in this situation if he felt Marcus might come on too strong. But when Marcus touches him Staci would rather be any place but here.

From the elevator to Marcus’ couch is a blur, but there’s a wine glass in Staci’s hand and Marcus’ weight next to him. Staci sips his drink and tries to listen, tries to focus on anything at all. But everything around him is blurry, soft. Marcus’ low voice spreading thin into the air.

He feels fucking…

Bliss drunk.

Alphas are so stupid, aren’t they?

Make them do anything you want.

How did you do it, Staci Pratt? Faith Seed asks him, her scent powdery soft and dominant, pushing Staci into the dirt.

She’s all blue eyes and blonde hair. Her features pretty but not beautiful. Dressed in white, she straddles Staci’s hips, laughing with her delicate bell of a voice, ringing in Staci’s ears.

How did you tame the wolf, make him beg like the dog he really is?

There are storm clouds above their heads, breaking into pouring rain. Faith’s hair sticks to her face, her dress growing dark and heavy. She starts to bleed gray blood, sluicing down her body and staining Staci’s matching dress.

When Staci comes to his senses, he realizes he’s laid out on the floor of Marcus’ living room. His head propped up on a pillow and his arms and legs neatly arranged. He can hear Marcus on the phone with someone in the kitchen.

“His emergency contact...yeah let me give you my address. Are you sure I shouldn’t call an ambulance?”

Marcus says “Alright,” hangs up and comes back, sitting on the floor next to Staci, “Hey, sorry, I um, took your phone and called the number you had as an emergency contact. Someone named Caleb?”

Staci takes a deep breath, his lungs feeling like they’re shredded through. “My friend, I live with him. Oh, god,” Staci groans, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I was just worried,” Marcus frowns, sticking out his legs in front of him and leaning back on his hands, planted on the carpet. “I should have taken better care of you.”

“It’s not your fault,” it’s not. Marcus has nothing at all to do with this. 

Caleb shows up not much later, with Delilah standing up next to him. She’s gotten into the habit of trying to walk and stand on her own whenever possible. Telling them “not a baby,” when they coddle her too much.

“Hi there!” Caleb greats Marcus with a big smile. Staci isn’t even really in a position to watch the door, but he can feel how Marcus recoils when he realizes this Caleb that Staci lives with in an Alpha with a dark-haired child in tow.

Staci pushes himself to his feet before there’s some sort of gross misunderstanding. As he turns to face the doorway, Delilah shouts, “Staci!” and bumbles right past Marcus. The fact that she doesn’t call Staci ‘daddy’ probably settles some of Marcus’ concerns. Staci told Marcus he lives with a friend and his friend’s kid, but Marcus probably assumed it was another Omega.

Delilah practically falls onto Staci’s leg and he picks her up before she totally faceplants, holding her against his chest. “Sorry about this.”

“No worries,” Caleb waves off any concerns. “Thanks for taking care of him, and thanks for calling me,” Caleb sticks out his hand again and this time Marcus actually takes it. Whatever weird Alpha posturing was about to happen has thankfully been averted.

Once they’re out of Marcus’ apartment, Caleb takes Delilah from Staci’s arms. “He was hot,” Caleb comments. 

Staci groans.


	5. Chapter 5

Jacob and Staci haven’t seen each other since the private visit. Staci hasn’t said a word to Jacob, after his humiliating taunt.

In the waiting room, one of the other visitors, a woman in her late thirties, comments how cute Delilah is. She refuses to take off her hat, even though the room is toasty-warm from the space heater in the corner. The woman asks Delilah if she’s going to see her parent? Delilah chirps back, “not Daddy. Not today.” She really enjoys speaking in negatives as of late.

The guard calls Staci’s name and he scoops up Delilah without acknowledging the woman who was just entertaining her. The setup of the visitation room is familiar enough now that Staci navigates to his empty chair on autopilot, not bothering to look at Jacob, not yet.

“Hey Delilah, hey,” Staci turns her around in his lap so she’s facing Jacob. “This is Jacob. He’s your uncle. Your daddy John’s brother.”

Delilah scrunches up her face, “Not daddy. Doesn’t look like me.”

Jacob smiles at that, “She’s already collecting evidence. If she isn’t John’s little girl…”

Staci rolls his eyes, “if Caleb and John didn’t look so similar, Caleb should have demanded a paternity test. Like, somehow John had budded without an Alpha.” He’s exaggerating a little about the resemblance between Caleb and John. Caleb is taller, obviously, and a little broader, though still slim for an Alpha, his hair is a touch lighter, his eyes hazel instead of blue. But it is true that their general facial structure has some things in common, especially with their beards hiding any difference in their chins.

“You look good, Pratt,” Jacob says, as if on repeat, “can I hold her?”

Staci shrugs, “if she wants to. You want Uncle Jacob to hold you now?”

“Not daddy.”

“No, but your daddy told you about him, yeah?”

Delilah nods sternly, the little ears on her fox hat folding slightly and popping back up. “Jacob’s good. Better than daddy was.”

Staci isn’t even going to try to get her to elaborate about what that means. But she sticks her arms out for Jacob to take her. He holds her up, so they’re face to face, eye to eye, as if searching for something hidden, obscured behind her irises. Without a word, Jacob deposits her in his lap before turning his attention back to Staci.

“Didn’t think you’d come.”

Staci huffs, determined to maintain his composure, “Do you think you frighten me?”

“No,” Jacob admits, “but maybe. Because you sure as shit scare me.”

Their visit is short. Staci has nothing to say and Delilah grows antsy once she gets tired of the novelty of Jacob’s hair, the scars on his face, the brightness of his eyes. Staci makes their excuses, standing up and holding out his arms to take Delilah back. They can hang out in the parking lot or something until Caleb is finished with John. 

Jacob comes close, once Delilah is tucked securely against Staci’s chest. Before too long, she’ll really be too big to carry around. Now that she’s walking okay on her own, maybe they should make her stand on her own two feet more? But she’s not particularly fast or stable.

Leaning over, Jacob kisses the top of her head, then Staci’s cheek. Sudden panic seizes Staci when he considers the portrait they must paint. That this could have so easily been their fate. That there had been a moment, however brief, that Jacob thought he could put a child in Staci.

“About last time, I just wanted to know...to think about you. Get a good picture in my head. Even if it’s with someone else, you look so pretty on a knot.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jacob,” Staci hisses.

—

Marcus arrives a little early for his lecture on Monday, politely asking if Staci feels okay? Staci responds that he’s fine, and isn’t at all surprised when Marcus doesn’t ask him out again. It’s for the best. There isn’t any other outcome. It’s just not possible.

—

When Staci picks up Delilah from daycare, the teacher says that her father should give the center a call. They have a matter to discuss, one that they can’t just relay through Staci, and it’s better that it doesn’t wait until tomorrow morning.

Staci makes beans and rice for dinner, finishing up right as Caleb makes it home. He tells Caleb he’s supposed to call the daycare and after shrugging off his heavy coat, Caleb disappears into the bedroom and closes the door.

Caleb doesn’t yell, but he’s not quiet either. Their dinner gets cold as the call drags on. After ten minutes of waiting, Staci eats his portion, puts Caleb’s in a tupperware and flops down on the couch.

Delilah is going to have to go someplace else, Caleb says, coming back out of the bedroom. Grabbing the tupperware off the counter, he sits next to Staci and eats straight out from the dish.

“I sort of...expected this, when she started talking, um, really stringing words together. Fuck,” Caleb gets up to throw his dish into the sink. He grabs both sides of the basin, leaning over and making a noise like he’s about to vomit. 

Staci doesn’t turn to look, but he doesn’t think Caleb actually brings anything up, at least from the sound of it. 

“Kids were going around saying their parents’ names,” Caleb laughs bitterly. “One of the other kids repeated a bunch of the names back to his parents. Just had to be a kid whose parents actually pay attention to the fucking news.” Caleb slams the flat of his hand against the refrigerator door. The boom echoes through the open kitchen, the fridge rattling on impact.

Looking up from his game, Staci asks, “they can’t kick her out because of who her father is…”

“No,” Caleb huffs, his hand still planted against the door, “but I don’t want...fuck. I wanted her to have just...a little longer, you know? Eventually it’ll be unavoidable but...she just needs a little longer. She’ll be so strong when she’s ready.”

Staci starts looking up daycares on his phone.

—

Staci calls on a Wednesday. It’s the start of March and he hasn’t gone to the prison since the middle of January. Every week, Caleb asks Staci if he’s coming, except when he’s scheduled a conjugal with John.

Waiting for the receptionist to pick up, Staci makes a quick decision. And before he can stop himself, he blurts out that he would like to see Jacob alone. The receptionist gets his meaning, asking to confirm the spelling of his name. P R A T T, S T A C I.

She says that he’s all set, once they confirm the time. Hearing footsteps coming from the elevator, Staci hangs up quickly. Marcus comes up from behind the desk, waving and saying goodbye to Staci on his way out.

—

It’s too warm for Delilah’s puffy coat, but she still won’t part with her hat. Staci has started looking online for toddler onesies that have hoods with ears. He’s got a fox one in his cart but he thinks that maybe he should order a second one while he’s at it.

Caleb leads her to the car by the hand now, Staci trotting behind and keeping an eye on her. Ready to grab her if she falls. But her little legs get her all the way to Caleb’s sedan. Caleb picks her up to strap her into the safety seat.

“Didn’t think you’d ever go again,” Caleb admits on the drive over.

Staci asks, “good or bad thing, you think?”

Caleb shrugs, his eyes still on the road, “I’m a bad person to ask, remember? I just want you to be happy. Okay, Stace?”

“Yeah, okay,” Staci changes the radio station because Caleb’s taste in music sucks.

—

“You look good.”

“Fuck you, Jacob,” Staci growls.

The procedure to get ready for the visit was the same as before. Staci stripped down from his street clothes, forced into scratchy scrubs and borrowed shoes. But this time, the weight and pitch of Staci’s conviction is different, sharper, stronger. Not that he’s any less distraught. Not as if he now understands why he’s here. But Staci has convinced himself that he will be decisive, even if he’s lost.

Before Jacob can stand from the bed, Staci shoves at the center of Jacob’s chest. He’s never been strong enough to push Jacob back. Strong, perfect, broken, Alpha, Jacob. 

“Get on your back,” Staci hisses, shoving at Jacob again.

Jacob doesn’t hesitate, rearranging himself so his head is on the single pillow they’ve been provided and his back against the mattress. Staci swings his leg over Jacob’s hips, resting his weight on top of Jacob’s thighs. God, they feel hard and hot and perfect between his legs. Staci starts to grind against them, a wicked feeling in his gut when Jacob gasps.

“You wanted to think about me on a knot?” Staci leans over Jacob’s body, getting as close to his ear as he can. When they’re nearly chest to chest, Jacob lifts his arms, wrapping them around Staci’s back to hold him close. Staci wants to snap at him to stop touching. That’s not why he came here. But being held, being held by Jacob is so deeply, so viscerally satisfying that instead of cursing Jacob out he shudders in his arms.

“I think about it anyway,” Jacob says, starting to pull up Staci’s scrubs to lay his hands on bare skin. “Remembering what you looked like in that dilapidated bomb shelter, in your heat. Right after we mated...Think about it all the time when I touch myself.” Jacob licks his lips, “think about you in the attic at Fall’s End, with the window open. How I could smell you downstairs while you tried to wash dishes.”

“Jacob,” Staci whines, his head already spinning. Even without their scents, Jacob’s presence is intoxicating, crisp and clean and bright. Tucking his head in at Jacob’s neck, Staci tries to breathe, tries to catch the barest strand of what won’t ever be again. 

“Remember you at the farmhouse,” each word reverberates through Jacob’s chest, pressing fiercely into Staci as they breathe together. Falling into sync. “In the moonlight. Spread out across the couch. I...I don’t remember mating you. But I’ll never forget when you made me break the bond.”

Staci can’t hide that he’s hard in his scrubs, his cock pressed into Jacob’s thigh. He’s wet already. Wetter than he’s been in years. Since the farmhouse. Since the insanity of Hope County.

“I didn’t think I could love anyone as much as I loved you in that moment.”

Staci means to say, ‘fuck you,’ but it comes out a broken, shredded sob.

“Took care of you the best I could, didn’t I?” Jacob asks.

Jacob keeps Staci perched in his lap as he starts to sit up, pulling off his own shirt before settling upright against the headboard. Staci doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, as Jacob starts playing with his hair, running his fingers through it, twisting it in his gentle grip.

“I’ll take care of you now, if you let me,” he kisses against Staci’s temple.

Huffing uneven breaths, Staci tries to steady himself, regain some semblance of composure. “No one,” he whispers, “no one has had me...since the farmhouse, since you.”

Jacob’s hands go still where they had been rubbing against the exposed skin of Staci’s lower back.

“Jacob, oh, God,” he’s crying again. Fuck. 

Jacob is exceedingly gentle, guiding Staci’s back down against the mattress while keeping his hips between Staci’s thighs. Grabbing the pillow, he shoves it under Staci’s hips instead, tilting the angle just enough.

Opening his eyes, Staci stares back at Jacob, shirtless and his scars on full display. Nothing can be done about them now. The burn that scorches his side is brighter than the rest. But Jacob is so fair that nothing really fades.

Jacob coaxes him out of his scrubs, shirt first, then the pants. Staci’s cock bounces out, curling up towards his belly, flushed and ready. Descending, Jacob takes him into his mouth, sucking on the head while he works the shaft with his hand. It’s good, good, good, the suction and the wetness and the warmth wrapped around him. The scrape of Jacob’s beard between his thighs. But at the same time it’s not enough. Staci wants, wants, _wants_ to feel Jacob inside of him. To chase the sensations and the feelings that he wasn’t supposed to want.

Moving his hand from Staci’s cock, Jacob slides it between his legs instead, prodding against Staci’s hole. When he feels how wet Staci is, he moans around his cock, flexing his throat muscles one last time before pulling off.

“This for me, Pratt?” He smiles in a way that is so cocksure-certain that Staci would deck him in the jaw if he weren’t so fucking turned on.

“Yeah,” Staci admits, rolling his head to the side. He realizes too late that he’s shown Jacob his throat.

Mercifully, Jacob stays well away, sitting back on his haunches and maneuvering out of his pants. His cock is just as thick and beautiful as Staci remembers, darkened with blood and fat all around.

He puts one hand flat on Staci’s hip as he teases with the other, collecting the bit of slick that has leaked from Staci’s hole and using it to ease his way in past the rim. One finger at first, then quickly two, meticulously stretching Staci open, brushing up inside of him and offering no immediate relief.

“Do it,” Staci whines, grabbing hold of Jacob’s shoulders, snaking one hand up into his hair. “Fuck me, fuck...ah,” he pants, “know you wanna give me your knot.”

“Want you to want it,” Jacob counters, “do you want it, Pratt? Want me to split you open?” 

Staci bites his bottom lip as he tries to buck on Jacob’s fingers, sink them to the hilt. “Yes,” Staci concedes, “Want _you_.”

“Oh, Staci…”

They’re quiet after that. Staci is too terrified to speak again. As if the slightest noise might break the spell between them. This fragile moment when Staci can sink into his desires, forget the things he’s supposed to question. How he’s taught himself to second guess himself. Can’t be trusted. His mind can’t be trusted. Too wrecked from the music box and the Bliss and Jacob’s bite. Can’t trust anything he sees or feels or tastes.

Not Jacob’s mouth against his, spreading kisses across his skin. Staci finally breaks his silence, saying something that he thinks might be _come back,_ before Jacob presses their lips together again, letting Staci draw out what he needs. 

Jacob fucks into him, slow and steady, Staci’s cock pinned between their stomachs, the friction more stimulating than Staci remembers. Holding onto Staci’s hips, Jacob thrusts, stretching him out and filling him up. Trying to push Staci to completion before he comes tumbling after.

Staci comes, his back arching off the pillow, trying to grind out his pleasure against Jacob’s abdomen, keep himself filled and stretched around Jacob’s cock. But Jacob isn’t going anywhere, already close enough that the knot won’t pull out. With whispers of _mine_ against Staci’s neck, Jacob hits the first wave of his release. Staci feels it so intensely that he feels himself come again around the knot.

Oh, God. He’s forgotten how intense the high really is, his head swimming and limbs loose as Jacob kisses him where his bite no longer sits. Staci wouldn’t be able to stop him if he did….

Jacob flips them over so that Staci can rest his lighter body against Jacob’s broader frame. Idly, Staci remembers they were always bad at this. Bad at remembering how awkward and uncomfortable it can be to tie face to face. And Staci laughs at that, thinking about his time with Jacob as if it were any other relationship. Some intense fling that lasted a couple of months. Instead of a fucking war.

The ambient air feels cool against Staci’s back, everywhere Jacob’s hands aren’t. Jacob rubs small circles into Staci’s lower back, kneading the muscles there.

“Feel better?” Jacob asks, still pressing soothing touches to Staci’s skin.

Staci can’t do much more than hum in his drunken state. Soaking up the attention and affection while he can, Staci presses the side of his face to Jacob’s chest.

“I know you’re a little out of it,” Jacob says, “but I need you to listen, okay, Pratt? Are you listening?”

Staci just manages to mumble out, “Listening,” and that seems to be enough to satisfy Jacob.

“I’ll take care of you, understand...I don’t give a fuck if the bond is broken, or that I’m in prison, or if you never want to see me again now that you’ve gotten your rocks off. But I will take care of you.”

Laughing, Staci thinks about how ridiculous Jacob sounds. But the offer warms his abdomen, where Jacob is still buried deep inside him.

Jacob’s voice is soft now, quiet in Staci’s ear. “I don’t care if you need Nylander for comfort, or another Alpha’s knot to keep you satisfied. But I bonded you first and you are mine. Nod if you understand.”

Staci is so sleepy now, but he nods for Jacob. Would do anything right now to stay exactly like this.

“John created accounts for each of us, money that the feds never found. I’m going to explain to you how to access my funds. You need to listen and remember.”


	6. Chapter 6

Staci waits until Caleb takes Delilah to the grocery store. Usually the three of them go together on Sundays, picking through the aisles without a list or even a concrete plan of what to buy. But Staci hasn’t made a move to get dressed this morning. Still in his boxers and one of Caleb’s MSU tees. 

As soon as Staci got into Caleb’s car yesterday, Caleb knew. Knew that Staci and Jacob fucked. But Caleb didn’t judge him, didn’t say he made a mistake. Didn’t congratulate him either. Just asked if Staci was okay? But Caleb has been fussy since then, touching Staci more than usual, a brush against Staci’s arm, touching his hair. Figuring it was some sort of unconscious Alpha-thing, Staci tried putting on Caleb’s shirt as a way of appeasing that protective instinct. And it seems as if Caleb has calmed down a bit. At least enough to leave Staci home alone.

Once Staci hears the car pull out of the drive, he takes his phone out and dials the number Jacob made him memorize. After years as a sheriff’s deputy, Staci is pretty good at memorizing pertinent information. Even if he was come-drunk at the time.

The phone rings three times, like Jacob said it would, before a man picks up. He introduces himself as James, but says nothing more, waiting for Staci to respond.

“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked…” Staci repeats from Revelations.

‘James’ hangs up and Staci is supposed to wait for a text. After four minutes his phone buzzes. It’s a different number, sending him a third phone number he’s supposed to use to withdraw from the account. Then a second text arrives from yet another number. It’s seven digits, but not a phone number. It takes Staci a full minute to realize that’s the current balance on the account.

Staci drops his phone, tumbling down his chest until it hits the floor with a crack. Miracle the screen doesn’t shatter. What the fuck. There is no way John hid that much money. And Jacob said that there were accounts for each of them. So what? Really four times as much is squirreled away between the “Heralds” and Joseph?

Does Caleb know? John must have told him, right? But then, why is Caleb working? When he could spend all his time raising Delilah in comfort. Is it not to draw attention to the money? None of this can possibly be legal. The Eden’s Gate assets were all seized when the Seeds were arrested. There’s no way this much money could have gone unaccounted for. And where the fuck did it even come from in the first place?

The heat is turned up too high and Staci goes to the thermostat to turn it down a few degrees. He wipes his sweaty forehead with his arm.

What if Caleb doesn’t know? What if John never told him? 

Faith will undoubtedly be the first Seed to get out of prison. Maybe within the next two years if she’s been behaving herself. Not only was she as sympathetic as John, with her big eyes and soft mouth, but she was very young when she joined Eden’s Gate. She was drugged up by Joseph basically the whole time. Her lawyers did good work, but her story did one better. Jacob and Joseph are unlikely to ever be released from prison. They’re so much older than John and Faith. And they’re Alphas. And they were pulling all the strings. Joseph may have been “Father,” but he could have never raised and army without Jacob.

But John _is_ likely to make it out, eventually. Caleb is building his life around the idea that he and John and Delilah will someday be together again. Delilah will likely be grown by then, but Caleb clings to the idea of family with a fierceness that is admirable, if misguided.

And now...Jacob wants to take care of Staci.

Either Caleb has been keeping Staci out of the loop about the money deliberately, or John has never told Caleb about the accounts. In either case, it isn’t Staci’s place to tell Caleb, is it? He tells Caleb everything, well, almost everything. He’s not sure he would even have the willpower to keep this to himself.

God, should he tell the police?

But then what if Caleb does know, and going to the police fucks everything up worse? Maybe Caleb has been careful all along not to be caught, to make sure Delilah can have as close to a normal life as he can give her. So he’s been subtle about the money.

Staci doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. And when he hears Caleb and Delilah at the door thirty minutes later, he’s still so indecisive that he says nothing about the account. Quickly, he deletes the text with the balance, keeping the other text about accessing the funds saved in his phone.

—

In April, Staci takes Delilah to see Jacob again, when John and Caleb have their usual conjugal visit. Delilah is a little warmer to Jacob now. Asking about his hair and the burn mark on his face. Jacob lets her touch his beard, so that she can test for herself that his hair is real. Then she asks to touch his scar. Jacob says that’s okay too. It doesn’t hurt now. He explains to her it’s a burn from an explosion in Iraq. Staci is pretty sure Delilah doesn’t quite understand, but she touches his side of his face tenderly.

“Rough,” she observes.

“Yes,” Jacob nods very solemnly.

Staci wonders why Jacob was never more involved with his children. He seems...good with Delilah. Patient. 

“I was fifteen, when John was born,” Jacob says, still letting Delilah stroke his face. “He was so small then, so weak….I knew...from the day our mother brought him home from the hospital. I wouldn’t be able to save him. That I was already too beaten down to fight. So, at first, I prayed. I prayed to God that He would take care of John. I was so stupid.”

Staci chews his lip, not daring to interject.

He doesn’t think Jacob was stupid. Even if he failed.

“I should have...I don’t know. Instead of burning down that barn, I should have taken my brothers and _run_. I should have been strong enough for them. I wasn’t strong enough. I’ve never been.” He takes Delilah’s chin gently between his thumb and forefinger, turning her to look him in the eye. “Delilah, darling? I have something very important for you to remember. Okay?”

She stares back at him, her eyes big and blue and matching his.

“Tell your daddy John that I love him. And I’m sorry. Can you do that for me?”

“Uncle Jacob love. Sorry.”

“Yeah, darling, just like that.”

—

Staci doesn’t withdraw money, but he watches Caleb’s spending habits. Tries to figure out if there’s more cash coming in than just their paychecks. Staci has seen the mail about the mortgage that comes in Caleb’s name every month, so he knows there’s a loan on the house. Delilah’s daycare costs a fair bit, but it’s not extravagant, and probably completely reasonable for a two-income household, even if Staci makes significantly less than Caleb does. He’s fairly sure Caleb doesn’t make payments on his car, but he bought it used. They mostly alternate who pays for groceries and Staci pays the electric bill as his way of contributing to household expenses. Caleb only let him do that after weeks of badgering.

Their only unusual expense really is food. They order takeout a lot and still get that meal in a box service that Caleb likes to prepare. But he really can’t figure out anything else that Caleb might be spending money on. At the end of the day, they’re living within their means.

Then again, it’s not like Staci is using Jacob’s money either. Fuck. He doesn’t even know what he would want. He could quit his job, but he’s pretty sure he would lose his goddamn mind if he stayed at home all day, even with Delilah for company. And pretty soon she’ll be in proper pre-school anyway. Caleb already offered to take care of everything and Staci refused. It shouldn’t be different when it comes to Jacob.

But this is different. Staci knows it’s different. Jacob wants to be _Staci’s Alpha_.

Jacob told him that he could take the money and disappear, start a new life and never see Jacob again. That would be fine with him. He only wants Staci to be cared for. He could do it too, leave the country, maybe? He’d have to get a passport first. But he more than has the means to expedite the process.

In the end, he knows he’s not going anywhere. Leaving won’t make him happy.

But his fingers betray him, opening up the text to send money from Jacob’s account to another destination. Following the directions Jacob gave him, he orders a transfer of $200. It’s so paltry in comparison to the total that Staci laughs. But he waits to see what happens.

Two days later, the money is in Staci’s checking account.

—

The semester ends in the middle of May and there’s a week before the summer sessions start. Staci doesn’t technically have time off, but he puts in for a half-day on Thursday, when the prison has limited visiting hours.

It’s the first time he’s driven out to Florence himself, normally he’s leaning against the passenger window while Caleb drives and Delilah babbles in the back seat. Watching the same scenery roll by. He was able to schedule a private visit for today, one that Caleb won’t know about as long as he finishes up quickly and still gets Delilah from daycare on time.

At first he can’t find the lot, having never parked before. But he follows the signs until he’s gotten everything figured out, then proceeds through the steps that have become routine. Sign in, wait, scrubs, shoes.

“You look good,” Jacob says, standing up and wrapping his hands around Staci’s hips. He dips his head just as Staci comes up to meet him.

They kiss, slow and languid in the quiet of the room. Staci lets himself get swept up in the sensation of being touched, being held. And he admits to himself that Caleb’s platonic affection isn’t enough. Maybe it might be for someone else. Someone who isn’t Staci. But Staci wants someone to want him, to fill him with fever. And he doesn’t want it from anyone but Jacob, who’s rough hands and dry lips and a horror Staci willfully misremembers as a man who kept his promise.

Jacob tells Staci to stand right there, dropping to his knees. He tugs down Staci’s scrubs, letting his cock bounce free and slap gently against his stomach. Staci has never been with an Alpha as orally fixated as Jacob, but he’s not about to complain as Jacob starts to suck him off, so wet that his spit starts dripping from Staci’s shaft as he pulls back to hold just the head past his lips, swirling his tongue over the ridge on the underside before sinking back down to the hilt.

Staci’s pretty sure that if Jacob keeps this up his knees are going to buckle, leaving him in an unattractive heap on the floor. Besides, as good as the suction and the heat is, and fuck, is it good, he wants Jacob to fill him up, put his knot in him. 

Pawing at Jacob’s shoulders, Staci tries to warn him that he’ll come if he keeps going. Jacob seems to get the message, pulling off with a wet plop and spinning Staci around so he’s looking at his ass instead. Two fingers slip inside of Staci at once, spreading him as much as they can while his legs are still together. Pulling Staci apart, Jacob replaces his fingers with his mouth, lapping around Staci’s wet hole and just barely pressing past the rim. Humming his satisfaction while he holds onto Staci’s stomach with one hand to keep him flush against his mouth.

Seemingly satisfied, Jacob pulls back and stands, dragging Staci against his chest. Holding him upright while Staci begins to relax, no longer lost at sea. But Staci can feel Jacob’s cock pressed against him, straining through the fabric of his scrubs. Ready to mount Staci, to give him what he wants.

Jacob manhandles him towards the wall, telling him to bend over and brace his elbows against the wall and spread his legs. There’s the edge of a command in his voice, but without a scent to back it up, there’s nothing there to make Staci comply other than his own complicitness. He does as Jacob says, arching his back to stick his hips at the right angle for Jacob to take him from behind. Jacob wraps one arm around his waist to hold him steady as he starts to push in.

Like this, Jacob can get deeper than when they fuck face to face. The angle inside Staci is different too. But more than that, there’s a heady, primal feeling. Because God, this is his _mate._ Jacob was right. Their bond is broken, but it doesn’t change a fucking thing.

Jacob pulls Staci’s hair as he fucks into him, their skin slapping together on each thrust. His hands are rougher, his rhythm hasher, than the times they’ve fucked before. Whatever tenuous gentleness Jacob used as a bulwark against their terrifying circumstances has been broken. And Staci _fucking loves it._ It’s the kind of sex Staci chased after in his early twenties, when he wielded his sex appeal like a weapon.

“That’s it, Pratt, take it, good omega, good,” Jacob purrs, twisting his fingers in Staci’s hair. “Milk that cock for me. Show me what that pretty cunt can do.”

Staci thrusts back onto Jacob’s cock, using what leverage he can from the wall to try and knock the wind out of him as he tightens sharply around Jacob’s cock. Swiveling his hips, he clamps again until Jacob hisses, “Good,” and slaps his ass.

Reaching around, Jacob fists Staci’s cock, squeezing hard enough to hurt but Staci doesn’t give a fuck. He just wants Jacob’s knot, chasing after the high that is sure to follow.

Staci barely registers that he’s coming, as Jacob bottoms out and his knot swells too big to pull back past his rim. Rocking gently now, Jacob keeps on stroking Staci’s cock until he’s completely spent, come sliding down the wall and pooling on the floor. But when Jacob’s cock buries another spurt inside of him, Staci feels like he’s on the precipice of bursting.

Righting Staci against his chest, Jacob gets them onto their sides in the bed. He gives Staci most of the pillow, choosing instead to tuck his head in at Staci’s neck and breathe,

He’s never going to smell Jacob again, Staci realizes. And Jacob won’t smell him.

Staci hated being off suppressants, he really did. And he doesn’t want to go off them again. Not in a million years. But he can still yearn for what has slipped through his fingers. Gone, forever.

“Did you get into the account?” Jacob asks him, drawing lazy circles on Staci’s stomach. Where their child would grow if Staci didn’t have the IUD.

“Yeah, I did...I haven’t….just a little...I don’t need the money, Jacob.” The come is starting to make him dizzy.

“If you ever do need, it’s there, alright?”

“Mmm, okay,” Staci concedes starting to blur in and out of coherency.

“I don’t want you dependent on anyone else, you understand?”

“Yes, Alpha,” Staci half-means it mockingly. He’s drunk but not that far gone. 

But his teasing must be lost in translation because Jacob nearly growls in his ear, “that’s right, Omega.”

God, if that doesn’t go straight to the pit of Staci’s stomach, the low, rumbling tone of Jacob’s voice pressed into his neck.

“The things I would do to you, for you,” Jacob twists his hips just enough to grind a fraction deeper into Staci’s hole. “Would do anything.”

Staci doesn’t doubt him.

—

Even though Staci cleaned up the best he could at the prison, he still smells like sex. He tries not to dawdle too long inside the daycare when he picks up Delilah, rushing home to shower before Caleb comes home. Hiding it is probably useless. Caleb will be suspicious about why Staci showered so early. If Caleb says anything, Staci will just make something up. Then again, Caleb might not pry.

It’s his turn to make dinner and he cobbles together some pasta and a sauce that’s more meat than tomato. Delilah toddles to the door when she hears Caleb’s key in the lock, nearly getting knocked over as the door swings open.

They eat in front of the television. Caleb doesn’t say anything about Staci’s early shower. Instead, he asks Staci if he wants to watch a movie? And after he’s finished eating Staci ends up leaning into him while they flip through Netflix for an hour, deciding on nothing.

—

Caleb texts Staci in the early afternoon, letting him know not to worry about picking up Delilah from daycare. He has to talk to one of the teachers anyway, so he’ll grab her on his way home. Staci doesn’t think much of it. Finishing out his shift and heading straight home.

The house feels strange and empty when he opens the door. Emptier than it should be. He’s alone in the house fairly frequently, well, about once a week if he’s not going to visit Jacob at the same time Caleb sees John. But this is...different.

Six pm comes and goes and Staci tries not to panic. Caleb said he had to talk to one of the teachers, and that might have taken thirty minutes...and then the traffic pattern would be different. Seven pm hits and Staci texts Caleb that he’s getting hungry. It’s Caleb’s turn to cook, but Staci is going to go ahead and make something. 

Staci tosses his phone on the countertop, waiting for it to buzz while he preheats the oven.

But the return text never comes. Staci bakes a bunch of fries and was considering making burgers, but now he’s too strung out to do anything at all. It’s only been a couple of hours, and he doesn’t have any evidence that something has actually happened to Caleb, so the police aren’t likely to entertain the idea he’s missing.

Staci settles on calling the daycare. To at least see what time Caleb left. The phone rings and rings, before a harried teacher picks up. Probably just on her way out the door. Staci recognizes her voice...Molly.

“Hi Molly, um it’s Staci Pratt, I’m Delilah Nylander’s dad’s roommate? Caleb was supposed to meet with one of the teachers. He’s not home yet, and I was wondering what time he left?”

The teacher admits she’s not sure, but she can check what time Delilah was signed out for the day. She asks him to hold for a second, putting down the phone and going to check the sign-in sheet. Staci can hear her flipping through the pages.

When she comes back, she says that Caleb signed her out at 12:17 this afternoon.

Staci thanks her, hanging up.

Checking his phone, Staci confirms that Caleb called him at 12:36. Meaning he already had Delilah with him. Or someone pretending to be Caleb did. No, no that can’t be it. The daycare is good about checking who kids are leaving with, they have photos of both Caleb and Staci on file as the only two authorized to get her. It had to be Caleb who picked her up.

Opening the browser on his phone, the news site he was last on refreshes automatically. He can try and call Caleb’s office. At least then he can confirm that Caleb left early enough to get Delilah at noon. He needs to look up Caleb’s work number on the company site, he never bothered to program it in, when he catches the headline across the top of the page.

“Prison Break: Montana Cult Ringleader Escaped from FCI Florence”

Below the headline is a picture of John Seed from the day of his sentencing. Just the shoulders up, pregnant belly out of frame but his face a little softer than at his normal weight. His hair trimmed short, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. 

In a panic, Staci drops his phone, cursing “fuck” under his breath. A car comes up the driveway, lights on and shining through the living room curtains. Caleb? Maybe, he hopes. But then there’s a second car, and a third. Fuck.

Staci hurries to the front door, throwing it open before the Marshals fucking break it down. As soon as the door swings open, three Marshals draw their guns on him, shouting over each other for Staci to put his hands in the air.

“They’re not here!” he shouts. Oh god, oh god. He doesn’t want to be fucking shot. 

One of the Marshals rushes him, pinning him with his body to the side of the house with enough force to make Staci yelp. Five others stream inside the house while two stay outside with Staci.

“Your name?” The Marshal that has him pinned barks at him. Staci is fully ready to comply but everything is happening so fast that he can’t get his words out properly.

He manages to cough, “Staci Pratt, I live here.”

“Where is Caleb Nylander?” 

Staci is honest to God terrified that his Marshal is going to hit him. Grind him up into dust. Because it doesn’t fucking matter that Staci was a cop himself for almost five years. It doesn’t matter because right now with the noise and the lights and the confusion swirling all he can think about are all the men who look like him who are fucking disposable as far as law enforcement are concerned. He can only think about his father telling him when he was twelve that the police are supposed to protect you, but that doesn’t mean they will.

“I don’t know! I don’t! I haven’t seen him since this morning.” He babbles, “he said he was picking up Delilah from daycare, and I haven’t heard from him since then.”

Staci’s shaking, trying to be good enough that the Marshal will just let him go. But despite his best efforts, he ends up cuffed and thrown into the back of one of the Marshal’s cars. The Marshal who pinned him loiters around outside the car while the rest finish tearing up the house.

Fuck, Staci doesn’t have his wallet, doesn’t have his phone. His phone with the text about Jacob’s account, fuck fuck fuck!

A second Marshal comes around the side of the car before too long. Staci’s wallet and cell in her hand. She pulls out his driver's license, looks at the card, then at Staci, then back at the card, before getting into the driver’s seat.

The Marshal who cuffed him gets into the passenger seat and they pull out of the drive. The female Marshal calmly explains his rights as they drive.


	7. Chapter 7

Staci tells the Marshal that he’ll wait for counsel, since he’s been arrested.

She shrugs her shoulders and escorts him to an interrogation room. Pulls the chair out for him and tells him to sit. She asks him if he has a lawyer or if he needs a public defender. Staci thinks about Jacob’s money in the account. He thinks about the Seed name and what that still might be able to buy him, if he can only get in contact. But that’s a path he can’t walk down without making everything look even worse.

“Public defender,” he hangs his head. It’s then that he realizes the Marshal means to lock him into the interrogation room until his lawyer shows. Panic spikes through his skull at the idea of being confined to the 8x8 room. No windows, just the locked door. Swimming through his fear, he tries to negotiate, “could you...leave the door open? I won’t run, I promise…” it won’t do anything, he’s suppressed, but without even thinking about it, he’s trying to throw his scent, wild and undirected, like he did as Jacob’s pet. He thinks that Marshal is an Alpha, hard to be exactly sure. She still hasn’t taken off her coat and Staci has been too nervous to get a good look at her. 

Sighing, she runs her fingers through her short, straight hair. Keeps her fingers fisted tight around the spiky strands. “Don’t like being confined?”

“No,” Staci admits, “not after Hope County…” he looks into his lap, then tries to look up at her through his lashes. Some of his behavior is intentional, but some of it runs on autopilot.

“Come on,” she hoists him back out of the chair, “I’ll cuff you next to my desk until your lawyer shows.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs, relief flooding through him.

To her word, she plops him down in a wooden rolling chair next to her workspace. She uncuffs one of his hands, slides the cuffs through the slotted back of the chair, and cuffs him back in. “Don’t make me regret this,” she says, sitting down herself and picking up the phone off her desk. Staci waits in silence while she calls for a defender to be assigned to Staci.

“You know,” she leans back in her chair, leather backed and a hell of a lot more comfortable than Staci’s. He’s certain she’s an Alpha now. “I’m not your enemy here. We just need to find Seed and Nylander.”

“I know,” Staci huffs, “but...I was a deputy I know how this goes. I just need a lawyer here. And I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Staci reads the nameplate on her desk, Tessa Harrington.

It takes another hour before the defender arrives. Harrington escorts Staci and the lawyer, Devon Kumar, back to the interrogation room so they can talk in private before she comes back in.

Once they’re alone, Devon asks Staci to be upfront about how much he wants to share. And how much he knew regarding Nylander and John Seed’s plans?

Staci runs through what he can: he’s willing to tell the Marshal what he knows. Which is very little. Caleb never shared anything about the prison break. He honestly doesn’t know a thing. 

Devon has clearly read up on him, enough to know who he is. “You’ve been visiting your mate?”

“Ex-mate,” Staci corrects, his ears feeling warm, “he never said anything either.”

They agree to call Harrington back in. Her face is softer now, kinder. Staci would say it’s probably an act. She’s probably in her late forties, early fifties, and thinks the gentle but in-charge mother approach might work on Staci.

He runs through what he already tried to tell the Marshals. He last spoke to Caleb around 1 pm. Then, when Caleb didn’t come home, he called the daycare only to find out that he picked Delilah up at noon. That’s the last he heard from Caleb. He never had direct contact with John Seed.

“No? But you visited his brother, Jacob.”

Staci sighs, “Yeah, I did...he mated me during the Eden’s Gate incident. I….was lonely.” He doesn’t have another excuse. Or explanation.

“You met with him alone?”

Hysteria bubbles in his throat, “yeah? Do you want to know positions too?”

Harrington scowls, “did you and Nylander ever use your access to your respective mates to pass information between FCI Florence and Florence High?”

“No, we never talked about our discussions with the Seeds.” Staci sucks air between his teeth, “Jacob and I...didn’t even talk that much when we saw each other…”

Harrington takes notes while Staci talks. Looking up from her chicken scratch, she asks, “Were you and Nylander sexually involved?”

“I don’t think that’s relevant,” Devon corrects.

“It’s okay,” Staci doesn’t mind answering, “no. I helped him with Delilah, and he handled most of the expenses. We shared one bedroom, so Delilah could have the other. But no. We weren’t.”

She has a list of dates in front of her. Staci realizes it’s documentation of Caleb’s visits to John, and Staci’s visits to Jacob. When she asks again about sharing information, Staci holds his ground. They never asked each other to talk about their visits. 

It’s late. Staci is exhausted. The questions spin around in circles. Finally, Devon asks if Staci will be held as an accessory or not. Because from where they’re sitting, the Marshal’s office doesn’t have sufficient evidence to hold Staci. All they really have is that he lived with Nylander. And happens to be Jacob Seed’s ex-mate. Everything else is circumstantial.

Harrington slumps back in her chair, admitting now that they don’t have the grounds to hold Staci. He can walk, for now, but he should also pick up his phone if she calls him. They’re not through.

Devon sets out to get Staci released from custody, metaphorically holding his hand through the process. All the way until they’re out the door. They give Staci their card, and make him program their number into his phone, in case the Marshals do bring charges. But they doubt it’ll come to that.

Staci thanks them, pocketing their card and basically watching them disappear into the night. Only then does Staci realize he’s in fucking _Denver_ without his car and without Caleb.

Fuck.

He takes a good six minutes just to panic, sitting on the steps of the Marshals’ building and trying not to cry into his hands. Fails pretty spectacularly at that. It’s past midnight and he’s not about to sleep on the streets. There’s not really enough money on his debit card to try and book a hotel room.

With his car in Colorado Springs, Staci doesn’t have a lot of options. Unlocking his phone, there’s only really one number in there who might be able to help him. He feels like shit, calling this late, and after they’ve barely talked in months. But, hey, professors keep weird hours, right?

The phone rings and rings before Marcus picks up, his voice scratchy with sleep. “Staci?” 

Staci is about to question how he knew, but then figures Marcus still has his number programmed in his phone.

“God, Marcus, I’m so sorry…” he’s stopped crying, but he doesn’t sound like it.

“No, no, no,” Marcus tries to soothe, “I...saw the news about John Seed and your roommate. Are you okay? I was worried…”

Marcus’ tone is so kind that Staci feels like he might break. He shouldn’t be accepting such gentleness from Alphas who aren’t his. “Um, the Marshals came to the house, they arrested me at first...but I’m out now,” he laughs nervously, “I’m kind of stranded in Denver though...they drove me out here.”

“It’s okay, can you text me the address of where you are?” On the other end of the line, Staci can hear Marcus getting out of bed and opening a dresser drawer. 

“Thank you,” Staci whispers, “I’ll text it now.”

It takes about an hour for Marcus to make the trip from Colorado Springs to Denver. Staci recognizes his car right away, climbing off the steps and getting in. The radio is playing softly but Marcus switches to the CD player, cutting off any chance of them catching the news broadcast.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Marcus says once they’re back on the expressway. He looks as exhausted as Staci feels. “I uh...Staci, I knew who you were the whole time, before I asked you out. I just didn’t realize you were living with Caleb Nylander before he showed up to get you that one night. I just...didn’t want you to think….I don’t know. I should have told you. I just want you to know, it didn’t have any bearing on how much I liked you.”

Staci looks at his hands, folded in his lap, “No, it’s okay. Thank you. I know this is a lot to ask.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marcus replies quickly, “let’s get you home.”

Staci doesn’t tell Marcus he doesn’t want to go home. It turns out to be a moot point anyway, because as they drive by Caleb’s house, it’s still occupied by the Marshals, tearing everything apart for something they can use to track Caleb, no doubt.

“You can come over to mine,” Marcus offers, “I have a guest bedroom.”

“Okay,” Staci croaks, too defeated to fight or argue. “Let me see if I can take my car. It’s in my name.”

Marcus nods and Staci climbs out the passenger side. Staci heads straight to the Marshal outside the front door, who holds out his hand to stop Staci from coming inside. 

“I’m Staci Pratt...I just want to take my car. I’m staying with a friend.”

“You have the title?”

“It’s in the house.” Because where else would it be?

What follows is a crushing circle of Kafkaian levels of confusion. It’s Staci’s car, not Caleb’s. And it’s Caleb’s house, currently being searched. But the piece of paper that proves it’s Staci’s car is inside Caleb’s house. And Staci can’t go inside. He doesn’t even know how many times he loops around with the Marshal, before he feels Marcus’ hand on his shoulder.

“Come on, we can work this out later, okay?”

“Okay,” Staci can barely keep on his feet as it is. He’s fairly certain he’s only stopped crying because he’s dehydrated on top of everything else.

It’s almost three before they get into Marcus’ building. Riding the elevator, Staci realizes that staying in the guest bedroom means sleeping alone for the first time since moving to Colorado.

As they head down the hallway towards Marcus’ door, Staci wonders if he begs for it, will Marcus take him to bed? In his current state, loopy from a lack of sleep, scared and unmoored, he’d tolerate being fucked by Marcus, if it means not being left alone.

Even if Marcus isn’t really interested in Staci anymore, Staci knows he can beg real pretty. Picturing it in his head, Staci is ready to drop to his knees once they’re through the door. Marcus said he likes traditional. 

Marcus knocks his knuckles swiftly against the door before fitting the key and Staci freezes. On the other side of the door is a brunette omega with brown eyes, wearing an NYU hoodie and with her glasses on. She looks tired too, but soft and open.

“Staci, this is my girlfriend, Helen. Helen, Staci.”

Helen sticks out her hand and Staci hurries to shake it.

He’s mortified, he really is. In no way did he expect Marcus to still be pining for him. That would be absurd. They went on one date. But it’s still overwhelmingly embarrassing that the man he called to help him had this beautiful woman in his bed. And Staci made him drive out to Denver to fetch him in the middle of the night.

“I made up the guest bedroom for you,” she soothes, stroking Staci’s arm. Helen can’t be more than twenty-five, but she’s effortlessly maternal, gathering him up through the door and taking over from Marcus. 

She ushers Staci towards the guest bedroom, showing him the door for the bathroom on the way. On the blue bedspread, she’s laid out some of Marcus’ sleeping clothes. Of all the fucking things, she apologizes that they’ll be too big for Staci. 

“I’m sorry,” Staci mumbles back, “I didn’t mean to…”

She hushes him, telling him it’s okay. Marcus has been worried sick about Staci since the news broke about John Seed. Tossing and turning in his sleep anyway. It was a relief, more than anything, when Staci called.

Leaving Staci to get some sleep, Helen shuffles out the door.

Staci can do little more than tug off his jeans and collapse into bed. At first, he doesn’t bother with Marcus’ shirt and soft sweatpants, letting them float around on top of the comforter while he tries to sleep. But an hour later, when he still can’t dip below the surface of his exhaustion, and pulls off his tee shirt to pull on Marcus’. In the end, that doesn’t work either. But at some point, his body finally gives up.

—

Marcus cooks breakfast for the three of them, asking over a pan of frying eggs if there is anywhere Staci needs to go today? Helen has to be to work by 9am, but Marcus doesn’t teach over the summer. His day is open and they can take care of what Staci needs. “You can stay as long as you need to, Staci. We can figure this out.”

Helen nods enthusiastically, her mouth stuffed full with crispy toast.

“I don’t know...god…” maybe getting his car, so he at least isn’t dependent on Marcus and Helen to help him.

It’s then that Staci realizes something that should have been obvious all along. 

He has to get to Florence. He has to get to Jacob.

“My car,” he tries to stamp his panic down. There is no way he’s asking Marcus to drive him to the prison. He has to be able to get there by himself. “But um, let me call around. If I can get a duplicate title issued, they’ll probably release my car.”

“Okay,” Marcus shovels eggs on to everyone’s plates. Helen only picks lightly at hers. “Do you think they’ll let you get clothes and toiletries from Caleb’s house? Or should we swing by a few places, at least to get you through the week?”

Staci just wants to focus on his car. But Marcus has a point. And on top of that, Staci can’t act...strangely. There’s already a dozen scenarios driving through his head with no fucking breaks, crashing against his skull every time that he breathes. 

“Okay, let me make the calls first to figure out the title.”

Seeing his opening and taking it, Staci slips out of the kitchen and back into the guest bedroom. He’s still wearing his jeans from yesterday and Marcus’ shirt. God, he doesn’t like it, putting back on his sweaty tee from yesterday. 

His hands shake as he Googles “Jacob Seed,” trying to figure out if there’s any news. A lot of results come up, but scanning through the headlines and previews, they all just look like stories about John’s escape, where Jacob, Joseph, and Faith are mentioned as part of the larger story, reminding the general population exactly who John Seed is.

As if Staci would ever forget.

He clicks through to the story from the Denver Post, since the others all look like the same rehash of the AP wire story. Skimming through, he reads that the search includes Caleb, assumed to be John’s accomplice. There’s a picture of Caleb from John’s trial. God, he really looked like a fucked up movie star in that moment, with his conventional good-looks and adoration in his eyes. It was all so surreal.

The story mentions Delilah, but there’s no current picture. Just a blurry paparazzi shot from when Caleb brought her home from the prison, just a six-month-old bundle in his arms. Nothing that could identify her other than the fact she has dark brown hair and blue eyes, 3 years old.

There’s some small relief in that there’s no mention of Staci’s name anywhere in the article. Not even that he was brought into custody last night. That could mean anything, but might just be the Marshals are hoping he fucks up and gives Caleb away somehow. And they know if Staci knows he’s being watched, he’ll stick his head into the sand.

Marcus knocks at the door and tells Staci that Helen has left for work. They can leave any time to go buy some clothes for Staci.

“Don’t worry about the money,” Marcus says softly against the door.

Jacob’s voice is there, as clear as the music box once was.

_“I don’t want you dependent on anyone else, you understand?”_

Jacob knew. He knew. He knew. He knew. Staci’s head swims.

_Did you and Nylander ever use your access to your respective mates to pass information between FCI Florence and Florence High?_

Staci never did, Caleb never asked. There’s no way that Jacob could have known. Right? Federal prisoners can’t send letters to each other. But they have access to the news. Jacob and John would have learned of each other’s transfers to FCI and High without Caleb or Staci in the picture. But they never shared….

_Delilah._

Caleb and John and Jacob used Delilah.

“I’ll be right out,” Staci stammers. 

He navigates to the text that will let him transfer money to his checking account.

—

They drive out to the county hall so that Staci can get a duplicate title on his car. As far as bureaucratic processes go, it’s pretty streamlined, other than the long wait in line. 

Marcus volunteers to wait with Staci. He has projects to work on, but they can wait, he says. As long as they get done by the deadline, Marcus can decide how he spends his time.

While they wait, they make a list of the things Staci needs to get, assuming the Marshals won’t let him back into the house. Staci’s pretty sure they won’t. He never changed his legal residence to Colorado. Technically, he still lives in a trailer in Hope County.

“It was a nice trailer, okay,” Staci shifts his weight between his feet. Suddenly strangely embarrassed by the situation. “Not much in the way of permanent housing in the county.” A lot of the houses that were around were decimated in the war.

“I wasn’t judging you, Staci,” Marcus is clearly embarrassed too.

They get the title. Luckily Staci has his VIN programmed into his phone. And his Montana driver’s license works as ID just fine. He doesn’t want to waste time with anything else before seeing if the Marshals will turn over his car now that he can prove he owns it.

By the time they pull up to Caleb’s house, there aren’t any vehicles left outside. Staci knows better though. The Marshals would have left at least two people to babysit the property, in case Caleb was dumb enough to try and come back.

“Just pull up in the drive, and wait.” Staci tells Marcus, “don’t get out of the car. They’ll come to us.”

And sure enough, within ninety seconds Staci can see movement inside the house. Another couple of minutes and one Marshal comes out the front door, hand on his gun. But at least it’s in his holster.

“Put your hands where he can see them,” Staci tells Marcus and they both lift their hands above the dashboard.

The Marshal gestures at Marcus to roll down the window. Staci talks to him instead.

“I’m Staci Pratt, I came to get my car…”

“And you?” The Marshal asks Marcus. Marcus doesn’t look at all like Caleb, but he is an Alpha in the right age group, and as far as Staci knows there aren’t really pictures anywhere of Caleb as an adult without a beard or with hair as short as Marcus’.

“Marcus Graham, I’m a friend of Staci’s, I’m just helping him out,” Marcus smiles a bit too wide.

The Marshal takes out his radio, relaying information to his coworker about the car, then asks for both of their IDs. Staci fumbles with his wallet, pulling out his license and handing it to Marcus to pass over to the Marshal.

A second Marshal comes out of the house, and he double checks the licenses. Then Staci is asked about the title. He pulls it out of the manilla envelope to show them. The Marshals have to make a call out to confirm. Staci will need to wait.

“I’m not even going to ask about going inside,” Staci tells Marcus while they wait. “I just...I don’t want to be here.”

“Okay,” Marcus replies.

The Marshals return together, handing Staci and Marcus back their licenses and the title. “Come back around six pm, we have to wait on the transfer paperwork. We can sign it back over to you then.” 

Staci exhales unevenly. He’s not looking forward to coming back, but at least he’ll be able to get his car. “Okay, thank you.”

Marcus thanks them as well before asking if they can go and putting the car into reverse.

At Walmart Staci buys enough clothing to get him through a week. Cheap jeans, packs of shirts and socks and boxers. A flannel he already knows will be too scratchy but Marcus keeps his apartment cold. Toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor, a replacement charger for his phone, doesn’t need much else.

In two days, there will be money in his account. Either the Marshals will know and show up to arrest him. Or Staci will be able to move into a hotel. Marcus (and Helen) may try to convince him that he doesn’t have to go to the Extended Stay, but Staci knows the longer he lives with them, the more at risk they are.

He’s considered calling Joey. Undoubtedly, she knows by now what Caleb did. But he has to go out to Florence first. And the fewer people who know what he’s doing the better. He doesn’t want any of them involved.

Staci waits out the bank transfer in Marcus’ apartment. Helen cooking dinners and fussing over him (she’s 23, Staci learns, a Ph.D. student in engineering at the university. So, nothing at all to do with Marcus’ field. He learns they met through a dating app in March, and really hit it off. Staci is happy for them both). Marcus makes breakfast and otherwise works from home.

Once he’s confirmed the money is in his account, he breaks the news to Helen and Marcus that he’s booked a hotel for the next month. He doesn’t want to wear on their hospitality.

Predictably, both of them object, assuring Staci that he’s not a bother. Helen goes as far as to smooth down Staci’s hair. They’ve liked having him around.

Staci wonders if Marcus already knows she’s pregnant. Or if she’s waiting to tell him.

Of course, they won’t make him stay. So after breakfast he throws his crap into a backpack and promises to keep Marcus in the loop in terms of how he’s doing. 

“Are you going back to work?” Marcus asks.

Staci shrugs and lies, saying that he made much better money as a deputy. He’s got plenty saved to see him through. That buys him time to make a decision about work.

After checking into the hotel, Staci calls the prison. There’s an automated message that visiting hours have been canceled for the week. He’s about to hang up, when he’s prompted to enter “0” if he wishes to speak to the operator.

Staci keys through to the operator, waiting as the phone rings and rings. Clicking over, he’s connected to the normal receptionist.

“Uh...hi,” he can’t even think of what he wanted to ask, “visiting hours…”

“Will resume next Saturday,” the receptionist answers dryly.

Staci thanks her and hangs up.

The Extended Stay has a kitchen, so Staci could cook for himself. That would mean going to the grocery store, so he orders pizza instead. Right now, all there is to do is...wait. Not draw too much attention to himself. Next Saturday. He’ll go see Jacob. He just has to hang on.

By the middle of the afternoon he’s fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room, the television turned to ESPN and playing softly in the background.

His phone vibrating in his pocket wakes him suddenly. Fishing into his pocket, Staci checks the screen. It’s a Colorado number, but otherwise he doesn’t recognize it. Picking up, Staci expects it to be a Marshal, checking in on him.

“Staci Pratt?” it’s the receptionist from the prison. 

“Um, yeah,” he sits up on the couch, his heart hammering in his chest.

“This is...I’m...from the prison.”

“Yeah...yeah I recognize your voice,” gripping tightly to the phone, he already knows something is wrong.

“You didn’t hear this from me, okay? But you’ve been removed from the list of authorized visitors.”

Staci’s stomach drops. No no no.

“What happened to Jacob?” Staci croaks. He’s sweating now, pain across his jaw and in his chest. Everything hurts and his head is light. He feels like he might puke.

“I can’t tell you, I’m sorry. But I didn’t want you...you’re not authorized, Okay?”

“Okay,” Staci tries to breathe, “Okay, okay.” 

She’s already hung up.


	8. Chapter 8

When Marcus calls, Staci picks up, if only because he doesn’t want him to worry. He forces himself into polite conversation, and doesn’t tell Marcus that he hasn’t left the hotel room in four days.

He does leave on the fifth day, only to run laundry in the coin-op machines at the other end of the hotel. The university has started calling him, asking him if he’s coming back. He should call tomorrow, and at least tell them that he’s alive. Doesn’t feel well enough to come in. He understands if that will cost him his job. Probably should.

—

Staci can’t get in to see Jacob, but he drives to Florence anyway. With a half-formed plan and hope. Getting out of his car, he hangs around the front of the building, playing with his phone and trying to look exasperated. Hoping that he isn’t caught loitering.

He keeps an eye out for any visitor he recognizes, someone who might recognize him, at least hear him out.

Twenty minutes in, a woman with graying hair and a slight frame climbs out of her sensible sedan. Dressed in a flowing skirt and oversized blouse, Staci doesn’t quite recognize her until she gets close. But then he remembers the first time he brought Delilah to visit Jacob, this woman played with her. Called Delilah sweet.

“Excuse me,” Staci tries to politely get her attention. He’ll probably look like a creep in any case. The only thing he’s really got going for him is that his face is still fairly boyish, even under stubble, and he’s so clearly an omega that he’s generally not considered an overt threat.

Startled, she looks at Staci, instinctually drawing back. But when she sees Staci’s face, her expression softens in return. “I know you…” she says, “you visited with that little girl.”

“Yeah,” Staci starts, “listen I...I know this is strange...but.”

“She’s the baby from the news, isn’t she? The one whose father broke out of medium security?”

At that recognition, Staci cracks, speaking quickly, “I can’t...I can’t visit my…” What should he call Jacob? “She was here to visit her uncle, but I’m not allowed to see him anymore. There’s nothing about him in the news but...I’m worried, they won’t tell me a thing.”

She doesn’t move to comfort him, but tells him it’s okay. He should...go wait in his car. Asking him for his license plate, she copies it down into her phone. “Wait, okay, wait there.”

Staci agrees, watching her disappear into the building.

As instructed, Staci waits in his car, the engine off and windows rolled down to let the breeze blow through. He plays Candy Crush on his phone until he runs out of lives. Then scrolls through the pictures on his phone. Most of them are of Delilah, some of Caleb too. There are a handful of the three of them, mostly snapped by Caleb, holding Staci’s phone out in front of them with his longer arms.

He waits for over an hour before a blonde head pops up at his window, “Debbie sent me,” she says, “you’re Jacob Seed’s Omega, right?”

Oh, god, no one ever calls him...that. The closest anyone has ever gotten is “the omega Jacob Seed bonded.” There’s a qualitative difference between that and “Jacob Seed’s Omega.”

“Yeah,” he admits, “I am.”

“I’m gonna come around and sit in the passenger side, okay? Name’s Tara.”

Tara is an omega, just about Staci’s age. Bond mark dark and exposed on her neck. Dressed in shorts and a thin tee-shirt, her legs are longer than a typical omega, but she’s still small-built. She climbs into the passenger side of the car, making herself comfortable. 

“Okay, so, I asked my Alpha about yours,” she pops the gum in her mouth. “Debbie texted me about you. Since I got a conjugal today. Anyway,” she waves off her own comment. “He says the day of the prison break, your Alpha starts a racket. Screaming, thrashing, like a man possessed, lured one of the guards real close to try and restrain him. Your Alpha smashed the guard’s face in. Should’ve been other guards to put him down, but some of them were acting strange...detached. Prisoners started acting up, once they saw what your Alpha was getting away with. Had to call in overload guards from FCI. That’s when John Seed got out.”

Jacob ran a distraction, Staci realizes. That’s why the Marshals kept asking about passing information. “Is he...okay?”

“Guards eventually got him down,” Tara shrugs, “beat him down. My Alpha thinks he’s still in the hospital ward. Smashed his hand to pieces, and his face. No one’s seen him since.”

“Okay, okay,” Staci repeats, more to himself than anything else. He just….he doesn’t know what he does now. How he gets to Jacob, how he makes all of this _okay_. How he gets back to a place where he was okay with not being okay. Because right now, even that seems far away.

“Hey,” Tara touches his shoulder, “listen um. Here, you should...shit if I know,” she laughs. “I might feel the same, in your position.”

Maybe, Staci thinks, but he can’t think of anyone else in this fucking world who has been subjected to what he’s been expected to endure.

—

Staci drives around until he needs gas, fills up his tank, then drives around some more.

There’s nothing in the Extended Stay that he needs. There’s no reason to go back. He could drive to….anywhere. Anywhere but here. But instead, he loops around Florence again, before heading vaguely in the direction of his hotel in Colorado Springs.

Staci can’t go to California. Not when Joey has worked so hard to get her life back, and Staci has just been circling the drain for three fucking years. Back at the farmhouse, she said Staci wasn’t ruined. That Jacob didn’t ruin him. Staci wonders what her opinion would be now.

Pulling up to the hotel, Staci grabs his keycard from his wallet before getting out of the car. At least tonight, he’ll stay. But other than that, he doesn’t know where he goes.

It’s mostly dark outside already, other than the weird, stray tendrils of the summer sun that keep the sky hazy in patches until real late. Staci wipes his forehead with his forearm, trying to brush the sweat away.

Once inside his room, he collapses onto the couch. Doesn’t matter if he makes it to the bed. Nothing matters but survival. Right? Jacob told him to survive.

Jacob, who is still laid up in the prison infirmary a week and a half after John escaped. Put himself on the line as a distraction, so that his baby brother could make it out a few years early. Be with his mate. Watch his daughter grow up. That is, if John and Caleb really manage to get away.

There hasn’t been any news. At least, nothing that’s made it to the media. About John or Caleb or Jacob or anything really. John is still a fugitive on the run, Caleb his accomplice. Delilah, innocent and in tow.

With the lights off in his hotel room, Staci reads through stale news, not knowing what else to do.

He ends up flipping through photographs of Jacob. Ninety-five percent of them are from his trial. The photographers preferred taking pictures of his right side, where his face and arm are mangled, bubbled up from the burn. Now, Staci thinks that the choice makes Jacob look softer, more human. Weak. But that probably wasn’t the intention at the time.

Along with the photos from the courtroom, Jacob’s mugshot is front and center in the image results. Taken the day they got bat to Helena, that’s the Jacob petrified in Staci’s memory. Unchanging. Even as the real Jacob Seed shifts and turns. Hair just barely starting to grow out on the sides, where before he had kept it closely shaved, thick beard, with stubble around the edges. His blue eyes tired, but open, staring down the camera.

Further down the page is _that_ photograph, the one Staci most tries to avoid. It’s too artistic. Too falsely intimate. And not really a pictures of Jacob at all.

Staci sees his own face on the witness stand, his mouth slightly open, hair tied back in a tiny little ponytail, no longer than his pinky finger. The prosecutor asked Staci if he could grow out his hair in the months before the trial. And then leave it down around his shoulders while on the stand. They asked him to shave the morning of. To wear soft colors. Staci didn’t follow any of their directions. 

So instead, he sat in front of the jury, the curious gawkers lucky enough to find a seat, and Jacob, with scruff along his jaw and his hair a greasy mess, in his deputy’s uniform. S. Pratt on his pocket and his lips bitten red. He looked like a haunted man. He was. He is. His mouth is slightly open, because at least when the prosecutors asked him to speak, he did. Like a good fucking dog. Arf. Arf.

Jacob’s head is in the foreground, softly out of focus but unmistakably him. The shock of red hai. He’s staring at Staci on the stand, hanging on every terrible, true word.

Staci hates that photograph with every twisted, wretched fiber of his being.

Though he knows he shouldn’t, he changes the name in the search bar from “Jacob Seed” to “Staci Pratt,” letting the pictures cascade down his screen as they load.

Mixed in with the photo from the trial is Staci’s mugshot, from that same day in Helena. The charges against him, Joey, and Whitehorse were dropped within days. Caleb took almost three weeks because it was difficult to ignore the body count as the National Guard kept pulling peggie corpses out of the Henbane.

There are a few other, less striking pictures of Staci in the courtroom and during his testimony. None of them have the silver screen composition of the most famous one. Other than that, there’s his ID picture from when he was a deputy, someone got ahold of his university ID picture too. The perils of working in state sponsored positions. High school yearbook picture, not much else. It would be masochistic to read the captions on the pictures. 

He knows his appearance was picked apart after he testified. 

There’s always that sort of...gaggle of people who seem to get off on the idea of fucking a criminal, making some monster love them, like they’ve never loved before. Caleb mentioned in passing, once, that there were a lot of pornogrpahic comments about John. Didn’t matter that there was a bite on his neck and a baby in his stomach. Maybe that only made the threats more aggressive. Disgusting shit from Alphas about what they would do to him, given the chance. How they’d make him beg and whine.

There was fawning over Jacob too. Of course there was. Staci couldn’t block all of it out. Though he’s hazy on the details of what exactly people were saying. He knows though, that some of it was about how unattractive Staci was as an Omega mate. Objectively, he knows that’s not true. Besides, how pretty he is or isn’t has no fucking bearing on what Jacob did. Jacob didn’t mate him for his eyes or chin or nose. Didn’t even do it for his hips or thighs or hole.

Staci can’t say with certainty, even now, why Jacob bit him. Only that he had to bear the consequences 

Tossing his phone aside, Staci lies down flat against the couch, staring at the ceiling, white, textured almost like tiny bits of popcorn stuck in the paint. There’s probably a name for that. But Staci doesn’t know it. 

He drops one foot onto the floor, leaving the other one pinned up on the couch against the backrest. His heart feels slow, heavy, like syrup as he breathes. With his eyes closed, everything feels very loud.

There’s Jacob behind his eyes. Where Staci doesn’t want him. Wants Jacob on top of him instead, or between his thighs. Bright eyes open behind light lashes. More accommodating, patient, than he has any right to fucking be.

Staci wishes Jacob were a monster always. Not only in fits and starts and when Staci turns his head. Would make everything easier, if Jacob stopped promising the world to him.

His hands floats to his fly, working the button open, but not the zip. Staci is starting to get hard already. Dreaming of people who don’t exist. Of himself, and Jacob, without this cancer between them. Just skin on skin and the bite of security and stability and need. Never satisfied.

Staci takes himself in his hand, stroking himself until he’s fully hard. It’s not enough. Sometimes it is, but not right now. He lets go of his cock, and goes to his hole instead. Can’t be the same, his fingers are shorter, smoother, even if they’re nicked and used. Pushing two past his rim, Staci presses into himself, opening for an affection that won’t surface. He’s nearly dry.

Jacob, Jacob, Jacob.

God, he wants.

He wants Jacob’s hands on his hips and his cock in his hole. Lips and teeth and scars along his skin. He wants in this moment to be lost in the flush of his heat and Jacob’s scent, mingling into his. Staci wants to go _home_.

He comes weakly, unsatisfyingly, against his stomach, come catching in the hair on his lower abdomen and the in fabric of his shirt. Drying into a sticky, awful mess. But Staci is too….everything to really move. The fingers on his other hand are barely slick. He wipes them on his shirt. Lost cause, anyway.

—

When Staci finally wakes again, it’s mid-morning, the inside of his mouth is cottony dry and he can smell himself. He never made it into bed last night.

Rolling off of the sofa, he drags himself to the shower, scrubbing with half-hearted efficiency. It’s been four days since he last did laundry, which means he has about two more before clothes become a problem. He’s not even sure he has two days left in him.

There’s nowhere else to go, so he just throws on a pair of boxers and pads back out to the living room. He’s got pop tarts on the counter, which he can eat dry and cold. Biting into one corner, he calls the number in Pennsylvania.

“Hello, Federal Prison Visitor Registration Services, this is Amy.”

“Hi Amy,” Staci coughs, trying to clear pop tart crumbs from where they’ve stuck at the back of his throat. “My name is Staci Pratt...I’m calling to check my status.”

“One moment, please.”

Amy asks him to spell his name, his date of birth. Her typing is loud enough that Staci hears every keystroke. When she’s pulled up his record, she confirms that his access to Jacob Seed has been reversed.

“Is that permanent?” he asks, trying not to let hope seep through.

“Indefinite,” she says, “which isn’t quite the same. I’m not authorized to see more than that.”

“Okay,” Staci tries his best to breathe, “thank you.”

Bolstered, strangely, just on the idea that indefinite isn’t the same as permanent, Staci heads back to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Only to find the tiny tube of toothpaste he bought with Marcus has finally run out.

—

Staci doesn’t make it out to Walmart until the next morning. Even then, he can barely bring himself to leave the hotel room. But, since he’s decided that he’s not going to die yet, he might as well take care of his teeth. He might need them. Might.

But really, food is running low too and all the salty shit he’s been ordering for delivery is making him feel as sick as anything else. His stomach full of this weird twisting burning sensation that is preventing him from eating anything at all. And maybe putting one (1) unfried vegetable inside of himself might help.

He decides that he’s clean enough. Showering every day isn’t strictly necessary when all he does is play games on his phone and watch tv. Besides, it’s fucking Walmart. There’s sure to be a dozen people shambling around in there who are occupying worse headspace than he is. Though, fucking honestly, he’s starting to believe that he deserves to be a wreck. Where’s his fucking prize for holding it together this long?

The fresh food selection is shitty, but he’s not going to another store. He buys carrots and broccoli that’s already cut up for him and sectioned out in bulky plastic packaging and takes it as a win.

He’s standing in front of a wall of toothpaste, wondering how the fuck humanity got to a place that there are like, a hundred different tubes of this shit all claiming to be different enough. He tries to remember what exact it was that Caleb was buying because Staci knows he doesn’t like spearmint and the toothpaste Caleb bought wasn’t so bad. As if Staci didn’t have about ten years of experience taking care of himself.

A little less...really. Because he’s not sure he should count anything after Hope County. Even if he lived alone for awhile, Whitehorse was pretty good at checking up on him. Making sure he ate okay and called him when he was late to work and convinced him it was worth it to keep living. 

Staci wonders if Whitehorse would have felt the same if he was the one who got caught, and Staci had broken free.

But it’s a terrible, selfish thought. Staci wouldn’t wish Jacob Seed on anyone. Though maybe the Heralds would have broken their hostages up differently. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. John...did terrible things to Hudson. Cameron Burke ended up fucking dead, long before Caleb watched him put a bullet in his brain. 

Staci knows though, that Faith wouldn’t have treated _him_ like that. But she wanted an Alpha, someone to bend to her whims. And as hard as she tried, she never would have completely broken Staci. Held him down, forced him to submit, yeah. But never broken. 

Not like Staci broke Jacob. Not like Jacob broke Staci.

“You like this one.”

Staci nearly screams when he feels the weight at his back, the arm wrapped around his waist, pulling him tight against the Alpha’s chest. “I always bought this one for you.”

Caleb reaches out, grabbing the box of toothpaste off the shelf and dropping it into Staci’s basket.

“What are you doing here?”

Staci keeps his voice low, tries not to arouse the suspicions of the other shoppers around them. He would have expected Caleb to be long gone by now. Out of the country, hidden away where the Marshals will never find him.

“Helping you shop for toothpaste. You wanna get mouthwash too?”

Staci exhales. If they play pretend, maybe he can talk to Caleb long enough to get some answers. 

“Okay, yeah.” He just has to hold it together.

Turning in Caleb’s embrace, Staci gets a good look at him. He’s shaved off his beard, though there is plenty of stubble growing back. His hair isn’t much shorter, but the cut is slightly different. Mostly the difference is in his eyes. Colored lenses that take his eyes from hazel to bright blue. Staci hates them already.

They walk just down the aisle to where the mouthwash looks like colored gems, lined up neatly in sparkling rows.

Caleb smells, different, strange. Like lemon scented bleach, but sweeter. Some sort of sour candy that’s gone off. Not the normal pale odor of sweat and the soap they both used. Then, Staci registers what it is. He’s off his inhibitors, and is trying to mask it with cologne.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Caleb says. “Knew they would take you in right away. This way, you wouldn’t have anything to tell them.”

“I fucking hate you,” Staci seethes. He doesn’t mean it though.

“You got money?”

Staci nods. So he was right. Jacob’s account was part of the plan.

Caleb’s shoulders relax a little, “Good, good. Listen, Stace. Pretty soon, we’re gonna need to drive out. Airports here aren’t safe. Can’t tell you where we’re going but. Uh, you should go _home_.

“Is that some sort of code?” Staci huffs, “because the rest of you are making some fucking batshit super villain moves here. And I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

“No,” Caleb assures him, “literally go home. To Hope County. Okay? Don’t stay here.”

They pick out mouthwash, Caleb grabbing one off the shelf to place into the basket. There isn’t anything else that Staci needs. But this conversation isn’t over yet. He wanders back towards the pharmacy, pretending to look at aspirin. After this conversation he’s going to fucking need it.

“Jacob’s hurt...the guards, he…” leaving Colorado means giving up on Jacob. Staci should, but he can’t. He’s not ready.

Caleb shushes him softly, putting his hand on Staci’s back and rubbing gently. Staci could almost melt into that hand. It’s been two weeks since he’s been touched, really touched. That was Helen and Marcus hugging him goodbye. He’s desperate for it now. That it’s Caleb touching him...Staci doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than some alternatives.

“Go home, Stace. Trust me, please.”

Even though the eyes that look back at Staci don’t really look like Caleb’s, he knows he’s going to listen. He can’t get in to see Jacob, and he doubts he’ll be able to get much more in the way of information. He’s incredibly lucky he was able to find out as much as he did.

“I have to go,” Caleb says, grabbing Staci’s hand and squeezing. “But hey, maybe we see each other again, someday.”

Staci doesn’t doubt it.

Caleb walks off, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. He gets as far as the mouth of the aisle when he turns. And for a moment, Staci thinks that maybe Caleb has changed his mind. That he’s realized this has gone too far. That they’re all out of control. Spinning on the sea without an anchor. They have been for years. Adrift with the Seeds with no shore in sight.

“We’re having another baby,” Caleb smiles from ear to ear and Staci knows for certain that Caleb Nylander is every bit the psychopath as his mate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all your kind words of support and comments and just ahhhhhh thank you thank you. Your enthusiasm has really motivated me to update this regularly and stay on top of shit.


	9. Chapter 9

Staci doesn’t call Marcus. Just texts him that he’s going back to Hope County. There’s nothing left for him in Colorado anymore. 

Before he goes, he calls the Marshal’s office, asking for Harrington. She’s not at her desk, but he leaves a message that he’s leaving the state. Going back to the same address on his driver’s license. And he’ll keep the same phone number. He’s not trying to skip town on her. He just wants to go home.

With nothing to load up in his car, Staci just drives.

Drives until he pulls up to the trailer park, exhausted, worn down to the bone, aching in all his limbs. He’s not actually expecting his trailer to still be there. He’s been gone just over a year now. But there it is, untouched, everything accounted for. And he wonders how this could even be.

His mailbox is stuffed full, envelopes moist and rotting, package slips for shit he ordered before his impromptu trip unreadable and disingeratrang in his hands.

At least he never uncliped his key from his ring, letting it sit side by side with the one for Caleb’s house. The screen door sticks a little, but otherwise he gets in. Right inside the doorway is a slip of pink paper with fading scrawl. A note from Emily, the property manager.

Whitehorse’s ex-wife has paid his fees. She didn’t know what else to do with the money Earl left for Pratt.

The trailer smells musty, stale. Everything is covered in dust. Otherwise, it’s not in bad shape. Staci isn’t exactly neat, but he cleaned up before he left, having planned to be gone two weeks.

He opens up the windows, trying to get the air to circulate. Clicks on the fan only to realize the electricity has been cut. Right, because he hasn’t made a payment in a year. Fuck.

That’s a problem for Staci to handle tomorrow. The water still works at least. And he has enough money still that he can pay his fines and get the electric turned back on. Might take a few days, but it’s manageable.

Sitting on his bed, Staci rests his face in his hands. It’s hit him now, full force, that this isn’t home.

—

Staci manages to get his electricity turned back on, because without it, he can’t charge his phone. And that’s at least enough of a reason to get himself to call the electric company. That takes three days, and on the fourth, he realizes that all his old clothes smell terrible, like rust and rot. He gathers up the jeans and shirts he likes the best, throwing them into a trash bag and dragging them to the park’s coin-op.

That might be a mistake, because it means people actually seeing that he’s back. The property manager,, comes dashing out, her gray hair pinned up high and a smile that is probably half-real on her thin lips.

“We heard...we all heard…”

“I wasn’t involved,” Staci says tersely, slotting another quarter into the washing machine.

She confirms that Staci doesn’t owe her anything, but he might want to call the ex-Mrs. Whitehorse to let her know he’s back. She made it sound as if there was quite a bit more money set aside for Staci. And it might put her mind at ease to know he’s okay.

Staci wants to tell her no, it’s alright. But if no one, save for Mrs. Whitehorse, knows how much money Earl left him, Staci can use that to divert attention away from the fact he’s not working. Staci asks the property manager if she has Mrs. Whitehorse’s number and she tells him to come by the registration office when he has a minute, she can write it down.

—

It takes a couple of days until his head is on straight enough to call Mrs. Whitehorse. She sounds relieved when Staci explains who he is. He thanks her for paying the fees on his trailer and she mutters something about how it’s probably what Earl would have wanted. Staci’s never met her before, but she seems to have a pretty good idea of the kind of man her ex-husband was. Whitehorse was always good to Staci.

She tells him there’s just over ten-thousand left. Earl didn’t have any children. Staci assumes that Joey got some money too, but he doesn’t ask about it. If Joey wanted him to know, she would have mentioned it already. They’ve talked a half-dozen times on the phone in the last year.

Staci tells her that she can send the remainder as a check, rather than keep paying on the fees. He’s got that covered now that he’s back in Hope County. She double checks with him that the address is right, making him spell out his name, letter by letter.

After he hangs up, Staci collapses on the bed. The fan is on and the windows open, the summer sun just now starting to recede.

Caleb told him to come back to Hope County. And he came. Maybe it’s insanity to think there was a deeper meaning to Caleb’s request. But Staci feels like he’s on a track, buckled into his seat and going for a ride. The destination is out of his line of sight. But he’ll get there, somehow.

—

Two weeks pass, then three. Staci does well enough at taking care of things like basic hygiene and keeping shit that sort of resembles food in his fridge and pantry. Whatever he can get from the closest gas station convenience store. He sleeps a lot, but that’s okay. The air is warm and the days are sunny and he likes being asleep. There’s not much for him to do when he’s awake.

Pastor Jeffries calls him, sometime in the middle of his fourth week back in the county, asking if Staci might want to come by Fall’s End? Staci reminds him, as politely as he can, that he’s lapsed. 

“I meant for a drink, Deputy, not a sermon.”

Staci corrects him there as well, “Not a deputy anymore.”

Pastor Jeffries laughs politely, telling Staci that old habits die hard. He should come out to the Spread Eagle, for a drink or three.

Realizing Jeffries isn’t taking no for an answer, Staci resigns himself to showing his face in town. Might not be much of a secret that he’s back. But that doesn’t mean he’s been a social butterfly.

He doesn’t get to the bar until 8:17, when Jeffries told him eight. Dressed in one of his old flannels and jeans that are about a quarter inch too tight all around, Staci makes a pretty convincing fake of himself from three years ago.

It doesn’t take long for Jeffries to wave him over to the bar, flagging Mary May down and hounding her for another beer. She smiles at Staci, tells him it’s good to have him back. She’s gotta grab something from the kitchen but she’ll be around.

Jeffries drinks his beer and doesn’t force Staci to talk, letting the silence between them hang. Neither of them have to ask Mary May for a second round. The reads them well enough to put fresh pints in front of them. Halfway through his second drink, (or third) Jeffries finally speaks up, just above the din of the room.

“I ask myself every day,” Jeffries shakes his head, “if there was some...warning sign I missed. Something more I could have done…” he looks up at the ceiling, then back into the bottom of his drink.

At the other side of the bar, two teens play on the beat up Donkey Kong cabinet. Shrieking every time they lose. The plink, plink of every jump tapping at Staci’s skull. Making it hard to follow the thread of Jeffries’ voice.

“I know I shouldn’t feel responsible. Men are free to make their own decisions. That’s the wager of autonomy. But,” Jeffries sighs, “I….we all made that boy fight. He was capable of what we couldn’t do. Capable of things that were utterly _inhuman_. Hope County brought out the worst in Nylander. And there’s nothing any of us can do now to steer him back.”

Staci feels like all the air has been knocked from his lungs. It’s not what Jeffries says isn’t true. None of them knew Caleb very well before the war. But they all saw the man he became. The press liked to talk about how he spared the Seed’s lives. Stole and manipulated and drugged them up. Turned their own tactics against them, and all four were brought in alive. But that doesn’t account for the dozens, maybe hundreds, he killed to knock at Joseph Seed’s door. 

At the time, Staci did everything, _everything_ that Caleb asked of him. Indulged his every whim. For the good of his home, for the people whose lives were torn apart by the cult. To end that fucking war. They all did what they had to. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t consequences. 

“I think...maybe…” Staci doesn’t know how to end his thought, “we just had to survive.”

Jeffries drinks to that.

They make small talk through another beer. Jeffries doesn’t pry too much. Doesn’t ask Staci why he’s come back to Hope County. Should be clear enough. Caleb has abandoned him. Poor little Staci Pratt is all alone again. Careful, he’ll get eaten up.

Staci is too buzzed to drive and Jeffries says he can crash with him, if he wants. At least that’s not an offer for anything but sleep. Got to be able to trust a pastor, right? Still, Staci says that’s okay, he wants to walk around Fall’s End a bit to sober up. Been back awhile now, but he hasn’t been in town much at all. Living off convenience store food this whole time.

Jeffries walks with him, the late-summer air just warm enough that Staci rolls up the sleeves on his flannel, sticking them up past his elbows. The valley sky seems to never end, even as the mountains in the distance hide the horizon line. The metal caging of John Seed’s singular proclamation, his YES, stands erect and bare in the mountainside. White paneling stripped away. 

Morbidly, Staci thinks he may not be ruined, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in ill-repair.

\--

Summer seeps into Fall, a muddled, tangled mess of continued heat but sharper, cooler nights. Staci still keeps his windows open, because the trailer gets stuffy if he tries to close them up. Place was always terrible in the winter. “Always,” as if he’d spent more than two Christmases here. 

Staci still doesn’t work, though he helps around the church maybe twice a week. He doesn’t think he’s being all that helpful, just another charity case for the Pastor. But the couple of times he tried not showing up, Jeffries called him on repeat until he picked up his phone. The one time he didn’t pick up, Jeffries sent Mary May to personally fetch him and Staci never wants a repeat of that confrontation. Mary May might be a whole year younger than Staci, but she’s got fury like a grizzled veteran twice her age. 

Flicking the lamp off, Staci climbs into bed, throwing the covers over his head and listening to the buzz of insects and shoddily installed power lines. The hum almost takes him all the way to sleep. Though he’ll spend most of the night hovering just at the edge of being able to slip under. It’s still hard for him to sleep alone. But he gets naps in pockets, when his body is too worn down to resist his mind any longer.

He’s about as deep under has he can manage when he feels the mattress shift with a foreign weight. His eyes snap open and he reaches for his gun, safety on and shoved between the mattress and the wall. But the figure in the dark is faster, grabbing him by the wrist and pinning his hand down. Covering his mouth with their other hand before Staci can scream. So instead Staci bites, as hard and vicious as he can. No hesitation as he lashes out with his legs, trying to kick his way free of his assailant.

“Pratt.”

Staci freezes, the fight draining out of him, replaced with lead and copper. The barest taste of blood in his mouth from where he bit his attacker’s hand.

Jacob.

It can’t be. It’s not possible.

Jacob moves his hand off of Staci’s mouth, but keeps hold of his wrist, running his calloused thumb along the inside, where Staci’s pulse beats loudest. “There you are,” Jacob sighs, “there you are.”

“Jacob?” Staci doesn’t trust his voice, or his eyes, now that his vision has adjusted to the dimness of the trailer. But it’s him, it’s Jacob, sitting on the side of the bed, red hair shaved even and short all around his head, his beard trimmed close too. Still enough to cover his chin and the sides of his face, but without any excess length. Makes the scarring on his face look harder, starker, with nothing to hide behind. 

“Yeah, Peaches, it’s me.”

Staci is spinning out of control already, affection starved and torn ragged at his edges. There are things he should worry about. Like U.S. Marshals, his safety, soul, and God. But nothing else matters in that moment as he drags Jacob into bed by the front of his shirt, pulling him until he’s bracketed between Staci’s thighs, chest to chest, breathing in each other’s awe.

Impossible, impossible. Maybe Staci has finally lost it for good. Jeffries will call him in the morning, get no answer. Find him in the afternoon a snivelling, drooling mess. Staci’s brain was too full of holes, they’ll say. From Bliss and violence and Jacob Seed. 

He grabs the hem of Jacob’s shirt, nearly tearing the fucking thing to shreds in his hands before Jacob helps him pull it off. Laughing darkly in his chest, Jacob paws at Staci’s boxers, pulling them down off his thighs and tossing them aside.

Hooking his arms under Staci’s knees, Jacob drags Staci until his legs are tossed over over his shoulders, the flesh of Staci’s calves rubbing against the scarred expanse of Jacob’s back. Staci lifts his hips, pushing his cock towards Jacob’s mouth.

Jacob opens, wrapping his lips around the head of Staci’s dick and swallowing around the head, pressing the flat of his tongue to the underside and dragging. Slow and maddening after having gone without affection for so long.

Staci keens, not able to fully process that his windows are still open and the trailers are packed closer together than they should be. But when Jacob sinks down in a steady, fluid motion, he just doesn’t have the sense to keep quiet as he tries to grab at Jacob’s hair before realizing it’s not there.

The pressure around his cock keeps up as Jacob slides two fingers into him, spreading them wide as soon as they’re coated with Staci’s slick. Jacob thrusts them as deep as they’ll go before spreading, twisting, making sure Staci has enough give to stretch around his girth.

He pops his mouth off of Staci’s cock, cooing that Staci feels so tight, so warm around his fingers, will feel even better swallowing up his knot.

Staci whines, tapping his heels against Jacob’s back, his voice scratching as he tells Jacob that he wants it, he needs it. Needs _him_. God, he knows he’s not in heat but the coal of desire that keeps burning in his stomach, through his nerves, is too pleading to ignore.

Jacob drops Staci’s legs around his hips instead, keeping him splayed open. He presses his open palm against Staci’s belly, Staci’s dark hair peeking through Jacob’s pale fingers.

It’s obvious now, where they guards broke Jacob’s hand, the joints are thicker, unable to bend fully, Jacob’s dexterity reduced. It’s too dark to see if there are scars as well, but Staci can tell that the hand is badly damaged, besides just where Staci bit him. 

Jacob uses his other hand to open up his fly, pushing his belt and jeans and underwear down with a single motion, kicking them away somewhere across the room. The belt buckle smashes into the wall, the noise ringing through the tiny trailer.

“Come here,” Jacob rasps, his cock standing up against his stomach, red and heavy in the darkness. He reaches out to Staci, taking him by the hand and pulling him until he’s sitting up.

They twist together until they’re back to chest, Staci’s knees spread so he can sit back on Jacob’s cock. Jacob uses the headboard and wall against his back to stay upright, legs tucked underneath him awkwardly, but giving him enough leverage so he can fuck into Staci as he rides.

He keeps one hand on Staci’s hip, drawing clumsy circles against his skin while Staci adopts the pace he needs, lifting his weight up and sinking down deliciously on the bulk of Jacob’s cock. With his good hand, he plays with Staci’s nipples, teasing one and then the other, until they’re both hard.

Jacob’s breath is hot against Staci’s neck as he makes promises Staci might claim he can’t keep. But honestly, Staci has no fucking clue anymore. Because Jacob is supposed to be behind bars, not in Staci’s bed.

“Just like that, Pratt. Just as good as ever,” he inhales deeply at Staci’s neck. “Never give up, do you?”

“Can’t,” Staci pants, impaling himself on Jacob’s cock, trying to wrangle his pleasure back. Because he’s terrified that if he comes, he loses this. The warmth of Jacob’s body against his, the lovely touches and creeping terror that this isn’t something he’s supposed to have. “Can’t let them win.”

“Who? Can’t let who win?” Jacob curls the hand against Staci’s stomach into a gnarled claw, he drags his nails across Staci’s chest, the bite of pain just enough to make Staci gasp.

“The whole fucking world,” Staci growls. Because right now, his rage is bottomless, and endless void of frustration and spite and terror, swirling together. So, so much has been asked of him. And he has gotten nothing but pity in return. Well-minded kindness that makes him itch and bleed when he scratches. Only to realize everyone, _everyone_ leaves him in the end.

Jacob presses his teeth against Staci’s neck, the opposite side from where they would mate. Deliriously, Staci wonders if Jacob’s bite would take again. If they could reverse the decision Staci made, after reversing the decision Jacob really didn’t. 

Jacob wraps both hands around Staci’s hips, slamming him down hard enough in his lap to bruise them both. Staci nearly bites his tongue but then screams out. Wordlessly, breathlessly, as Jacob pulls him off and flips him over onto his back. Jacob wastes no time thrusting back in, sheathing himself to the hilt and making Staci’s teeth rattle on impact.

“Fuck, Pratt, why do you have to be so fucking _good_?” He braces his forearms on either side of Staci’s head, blocking out what remains of the orange light dimly illuminating the park and bringing their faces close together. Jacob presses his lips over Staci’s mouth, coaxing him to open, open, _kiss_. Drawn out and perfectly soft against the rigor of their hips. 

Staci wraps his legs tight around Jacob’s back, locking them together well before Jacob’s knot begins to swell. Keeping him from slipping through, vanishing into the night air. 

Pulling back, just the barest inch, Jacob kisses against the corner of Staci’s eye. “Crybaby,” he whispers, strange humor in his voice. “Thought that made you weak, once. I know better now.”

Staci didn’t even realize he had been crying.

Jacob bites him as he comes, over his collarbone where Staci’s skin will bruise but there’s no risk of mating. Capillaries bursting under blunt teeth. Staci throws his head back as Jacob’s knot swells, pumping come inside him, ripping his orgasm unexpectedly from his abdomen. He can’t stop the sob that escapes his throat.

His world is slightly blurry as Jacob flips them over again, so Staci can lie bonelessly against his chest. Head swimming and hole taut, Staci still has enough sense to think the dream might end. He’s tired enough to fall asleep like this. Jacob still locked inside him, filling him, keeping him wet and open. Just the solid mass of Jacob’s body underneath him is enough to make him drowsy, relaxed, safe. But this is anything but safe.

If it’s not a dream, that means Jacob escaped. That means the Marshals will come to Staci first. They’ll fly in from Helena and this time Staci won’t have ignorance as an excuse.

“Sleep, Pratt, it’s okay, you should sleep,” Jacob tangles the fingers of his broken hand in Staci’s hair, cradling the back of his head as he falls asleep against Jacob’s chest.


	10. Chapter 10

Staci expects to wake alone, the other side of the bed cold. Not with Jacob’s arm heavy around his waist, freckles distinct in the morning light and his nose stuck in Staci’s hair. Jacob is snoring softly as the sun climbs higher and higher in the sky. The memory of last night floods Staci’s senses, makes it hard to breathe. Jacob is _here_ in Staci’s _bed_ when he’s supposed to be in a federal prison for the rest of his natural fucking life.

“Jacob?” Staci croaks, his throat dry. “Jacob…”

Jacob kisses the top of his head, rubs Staci’s bars stomach with his hand. He’s still sticky with come and sweat.

“Mmm, I hear you. What is it that you need?” Jacob tucks his knees up slightly towards his chest, dragging Staci’s legs along for the ride so that they’re curled even more tightly together. Jacob’s thicker, longer frame envelopes him, shielding Staci from all else.

“How the fuck are you here?” Staci hisses. Because this, this is not possible.

“I-“

There’s a fierce knock at the side of the trailer, rattling the walls, a fist against the metal panel. A sharp shout of “U.S. Marshals, open up!” And Staci’s blood runs cold.

But before he can get out of bed, Jacob presses gently against his sternum. “Stay here. No matter what. I can handle this.”

“They are fucking here for you,” Staci tries to keep his volume down. Tries to keep from puking too. There was never another outcome. But everything is moving too fast. He can’t believe they had as much time as they did.

Jacob slides out of bed, stumbling to the corner to grab his pants. When he can’t find his shirt, he reaches into Staci’s open laundry basket and grabs a dirty one. The cotton pulls too tightly across his back and shoulders, but at least he’s covered up.

Wrapping the blankets around himself, Staci sits straight up in bed. The door slam shut behind Jacob as he climbs out of the trailer, and the noise is enough to rouse Staci into action, breaking from his trance. He tosses aside the sheets and hurries to get dressed.

With the windows open, he can hear the conversation between the Marshals and Jacob outside. Jacob responding to their questions with a firm seriousness. “No, ma’am, yes ma’am.” But there’s no shouting, no evidence of a confrontation. What the fuck?

Staci is just barely in order as he drags himself towards the door. There’s still a mess of dried come on his abdomen but at least his shirt covers up the worst of it. He stands close enough to it that he can hear everything, but is too terrified that going outside will just make things worse.

“Oh, you don’t need to concern yourselves, promise,” Jacob says. “We all settled here?”

Staci steps back from the door as he hears Jacob’s hand on the knob. The Marshals talk amongst themselves, voices receding into the distance. Jacob’s brow is furrowed as he comes back inside the trailer, letting the screen door slam behind him.

“What the fuck, Jacob,” Staci shout-whispers. “What the fuck is going on?”

Jacob drops his hands onto Staci’s hips, backing him up until his lower spine bumps against the kitchen countertop. Looming over him, Jacob holds his gaze, icy, still. He presses his thumb into Staci’s hip, pinning him in place. “Everyone has a price, everyone has a weakness, Pratt.”

“You bribed them?” That seems like such a ridiculously short-sighted solution that Staci’s fairly sure that he is going to vomit. All over Jacob’s chest wearing his shirt. Buying two U.S. Marshals doesn’t solve a fucking thing. Someone is going to see Jacob here and they’ll bring an entire fucking army to Hope County to drag him back.

“No,” Jacob tilts his head, “god,” he looks up at the ceiling, “how do I even explain….Nancy. You remember Nancy, right?”

“Nancy,” Staci repeats, the pegs of realization clicking into place, “they believe in Joseph.”

“Many people seek salvation. A place to lay their heads when the Collapse is upon us.”

Staci hisses, “Jacob, _you_ don’t even believe in Joseph.”

“No,” and that’s the first time Jacob has admitted directly what Staci has known all along, “but I believe in safety, survival, power. I believe in all the things that Joseph’s ‘visions’ bought our family.”

“Your family,” Staci counters. He doesn’t want anything to do with Joseph fucking Seed. Even if he might want his brother’s warmth and affection and knot. “And if you’ve forgotten. You _lost_ the war.”

“Did we?” Jacob raises one bright eyebrow. “Because where is the Savior of Hope County now?”

Staci’s stomach drops. Because Caleb is on the run with John, John who wears Caleb’s bite and has carried his children and set Staci up with 1.4 million dollars through a couple of text messages.

Spinning, Staci starts to slip towards the floor. But before he can hit the back of his head against the lip of the countertop, Jacob grabs him under his armpits and hoists him back up to his feet.

“Breathe, Pratt, breathe,” he puts his big hand over the back of Staci’s neck and holds. Letting the warmth spread across Staci’s skin. Only then does he squeeze softly, working out the tight coil of Staci’s tension.

“This is a nightmare,” Staci mumbles, planting his face against Jacob’s chest. When he breathes, he smells them mixed together. Not their underlying, dynamic scents, the pharms stop those from breaking through, but Staci’s sweat and soap mixed with Jacob’s skin and both their come and Staci’s slick from the night before.

Jacob hums, “Do you want me to go?”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

—

It’s like living in a dream. Nightmares curling smoke around the edge of something bright and slightly blurry. A darkness trying to nip at his heels, but never quite being able to push back the light. 

Staci sits at the kitchen table built for two, but that he’s never shared with anyone, while Jacob goes through the fridge, looking for something that he can prepare. Doesn’t come up with much other than the three eggs left in the carton and a bunch of half-stale crackers. Little bit of cheese that’s starting to get hard. 

Some weeks have been better than others for Staci. Even if he gets out to Fall’s End more frequently, he’s not always good at getting to the store.

Jacob tries his best at cooking up the eggs in a bit of oil while Staci just watches. Because he’s certain now that this is a mirage. The eggs crackle in the pan as they cook.

Shoveling the finished eggs onto plates, Jacob says that Staci should be buying proper food. That was the whole point of the account.

“Hire a fucking housekeeper if you have to,” he grumbles.

Staci fucking laughs at the thought of a housekeeper when he really doesn’t even have a house big enough to turn around in. “It’s called depression, asshole,” Staci says, accepting the fork from Jacob and starting to stick eggs into his mouth.

Jacob narrows his eyes, sitting across from Staci with his own plate. “Buy a house,” he says, “somewhere up in the hills. Don’t think the Marshals will come around again, at least not for awhile. But if your neighbors are calling the cops on me every three minutes, this’ll never last.”

Choking on his eggs, Staci pounds against his chest to clear them down the right pipe, “You can’t be fucking serious. You’re probably all over the fucking news.” Between Jacob’s arrival last night and the Marshals showing up this morning, Staci hasn’t actually had enough time to check his phone. “When John escaped they fucking arrested _me_ within hours.”

Jacob leans back in his chair and Staci doesn’t even warn him that he’s liable to break it if he hits the angle wrong. He just takes a sip of his glass of water and waits for Jacob to explain himself. Tilting forward, so all four chair legs are safely on the linoleum again, Jacob clasps his hands together.

“John’s liberation was intended to be...messy. Mine was not.”

“Oh my god,” Staci laughs because there’s nowhere left for his hysteria to go but out. Otherwise, he’s about to scream. “Next you’re going to tell me that Jesus himself is going to spring out of Indianapolis, rent a fucking car, drive to Terra Haute and go bail Joseph out.” He covers his face with his hands, fork forgotten. This can’t be happening.

“No,” Jacob says firmly, “John didn’t plan anything for Joe. He was supposed to….but he hasn’t. This was all supposed to be for Joe. But it’s not now.”

Pushing his half-full plate away, Staci starts to get up. He needs air. He needs to not be so close to Jacob. Who makes any and all things sound possible and yet completely fucking delusional. 

“Eat your breakfast, Pratt,” Jacob tells him firmly. “You’re too fucking thin.”

“Fuck you,” Staci seethes, slipping on his shoes and heading out the door. The damn screen is going to fall off its hinges at this rate.

He stalks towards his car, keenly aware that he’s being watched from all angles. Fuck. On top of the visit from the Marshals this morning, the windows in his trailer were open last night. There’s no fucking mystery what’s going on. They’ve all probably seen the news that Jacob Seed escaped from prison. And they all heard Staci getting fucking railed last night. Putting two and two together is pretty fucking easy from there.

Staci hunches his shoulders, unsure now if he should leave the park. He was thinking that he’d go for a drive through the valley, try to calm the fuck down before he made an attempt at gouging out Jacob’s eyes. Or doing something rational like calling the Marshals back. They can’t all be in John’s pocket, right? Someone will come and haul Jacob away eventually.

But, more immediately, Jacob has enemies here. Right in the trailer park. And with good reason. He’s hurt, fucking _killed_ so many of their friends, their families. Jacob Seed has ruined their lives. Not as intimately as Staci’s, but nonetheless, he is as much a reason for their shared trauma as his brothers. Maybe more so, because he put guns in the Peggies’ hands and taught them to be soldiers.

He gets as far as his car, opens the door and climbs into the driver’s side, key in the ignition, but the engine still off. Staci rests his hands on the steering wheel and his forehead on his hands and breathes. If he leaves, it won’t matter if he wants to pluck Jacob’s eyes from him skull and squish them between his fingers. He’ll be coming home to a corpse in his kitchen. 

Taking his keys back, Staci gets out of the car, locking it up behind him. The other residents of the park watch him through their windows as he shambles back to his trailer, keys cutting into the skin of his palm. The door is still unlocked, Jacob didn’t bother to turn the knob. 

Once he’s back inside, Jacob’s hands are on him, lifting at his waist and giving Staci little choice to wrap his legs around Jacob’s hips as he’s hoisted off his feet. It doesn’t take more than a few steps to get back into the bedroom, Jacob tossing him onto the mattress and pulling at his jeans.

Jacob drops to his knees on the floor, Staci’s lower half hanging off the side of the bed. He spreads Staci’s thighs, ignoring his cock this time and instead putting his clever mouth against Staci’s hole, licking his tongue flat against the entrance with long strokes before pulling Staci apart and starting to push the tip past the rim.

Staci croaks, draping his legs over Jacob’s shoulders and clawing for anything he can grab ahold of. The gentle pressure feels good against the slight soreness of his hole after last night. More than that, the thought of Jacob tasting himself, his left over come from inside Staci’s hole is such a wicked, perverse vision it has Staci seeing stars. 

Jacob works Staci’s cock clumsily with his injured hand. In the light of day Staci can better see where his joints are larger than before, the scar tissue making each knuckle look oversized. There’s a heavy slash mark across the back of it, like he was cut with jagged metal. It’s a wonder that Jacob has any movement left in it at all. But from how loose and sloppy his grip is, Staci is fairly certain Jacob can’t make a fist anymore. 

“Fuck,” Staci pants, trying to find some semblance of control. “You can’t fucking solve everything with your dick, Jacob.”

Pulling back from between Staci’s legs, Jacob’s mouth is shiny and wet, lips pinked and eyes bright. “Dick, and mouth, and fingers, and-”

Staci groans, “What you gonna fuck the entire federal government into submission?” he pounds his fist against the small section of Jacob’s shoulder not currently blanketed by his own legs.

“No, Pratt, just you,” he slides three of his fingers in at once. Not quite as thick as his cock, but close. Not nearly as long but still satisfying in a way that makes Staci groan at the intrusion. Throwing his head back, he grinds into Jacob’s fingers. Gasps again when Jacob pulls them out, sucking around them loudly, lewdly. 

Jacob lifts himself up off the floor to hover over Staci instead, shoving his three fingers back inside. Staci arches in response, bumping their chests together as Jacob plunges into him. 

“Touch yourself,” Jacob whispers against his ear. “Wanna watch you come for me. Look so pretty when you do. Look like mine.”

Staci’s hand flies to his cock, grabbing at his swollen dick and pumping harshly, driving himself towards his orgasm full speed. His arm keeps bumping into Jacob’s, but they find a rhythm soon enough. Jacob still churning filth into his ear.

“Want you to never want anyone else, Pratt. Want you to know you’re mine. I’m yours,” he scrapes his teeth against Staci’s neck. Dangerous, dangerous. “Get you addicted to my knot. Don’t matter you don’t have my bite.”

“Fuck,” Staci whines, his toes curling and abdomen flexing as he contracts around Jacob’s fingers. He’s fucking come on himself a second time without cleaning up. And that would be so fucking gross if he had half a mind to care. 

Jacob pulls his fingers out, licks them clean, before grabbing Staci’s legs and dragging them so he’s right-way-round in the bed. Peeling off his shirt, Jacob climbs in next to him, his chest barely touching Staci’s side, letting Staci roll against him, if he wants.

“For someone who talks a big game about his knot…”

Jacob rolls his eyes, “I’m _fifty_ , Pratt. Give me a break.”

Staci shifts so he can press himself against Jacob’s chest. “I can’t go to prison...Jacob. I can’t.” The thought of being confined against his will dredges up his most violent fears. The worst of his nightmares. And there are so many horrific thoughts vying for that title.

Jacob runs his hand down the center of Staci’s spine, rucking up the tee that he’s still wearing. “You won’t. John’s influence will buy us time. Buy land up in the mountains, Pratt. More than my head on a platter, the people of Hope County want to be left alone. They want to stick their heads in the sand and forget what happened. As long as we don’t rub it in their faces. No one, no one will come for us.”

“You can’t promise that,” Staci breathes.

Jacob swallows hard, “okay. When our time runs out. When everything finally breaks for good. I’ll go with the Marshals. I won’t fight. Use the same number I gave you before. Ask for Elijah. He’s John’s...friend in Atlanta. Do everything he tells you. You hear me? When he tells you to grow your hair out, when he tells you to fucking wear white, when he pulls every trick in the book to get a pretty, young Omega off for what a big, bad, Alpha did to him. You fucking listen.”

“Jacob...don’t ask this of me,” Staci says. But he still doesn’t want Jacob to leave. Not yet.

“And when you find another Alpha that fucks you good enough, you’d better forget about me.”

When Jacob can’t find anything in Staci’s pantry to make for lunch, he asks Staci to go to the fucking store. And try to find anything with nutritional value, so help him God.

—

Pastor Jeffries has called him twelve times, Mary May another six. She’s undoubtedly on her way over by now. Staci assumes half the county knows Jacob is here. Would be the whole damn thing, but the region isn’t dense enough. There will always be holes in information.

Staci manages to scrounge enough from the convenience store that Jacob isn’t starving. And he finally gives up on making Staci go to Fall’s End today. Staci still assumes they’ll both be in the Marshals’ custody by tonight. So what does it even fucking matter?

But the Marshals don’t show up. And that night they both squeeze into Staci’s bed. Once the lights are off Jacob plays with him enough that he gets hard, then sucks his cock until he spends into Jacob’s mouth.

“Should be able to knot you again tomorrow, if you want,” Jacob promises, sneaking his hand around to toy with Staci’s hole. Slips a single finger in and tugs. Feels nice, even if Staci is well satisfied.

Staci grumbles, “you think about anything other than sex?”

“Yep, sure,” Jacob says, “but right now, it’s the only thing we have in common.”

“Then just leave, Jacob, go,” he doesn’t mean it. But if Jacob were to walk, Staci wouldn’t stop him.

“When that’s what you really want, I will.”

Staci is too tired to fight him anymore tonight.


	11. Chapter 11

After picking through another plate of eggs, Staci declares he’s going to Fall’s End. He fully expects a mob to set his trailer on fire while he’s gone, broil Jacob alive inside with the door barred shut and guns pointed in through the windows to keep Jacob caged inside while he roasts. How is that for poetic justice? 

But taking Jacob into town definitely isn’t a fucking option either. So as he’s heading out the door, Staci comes up on his toes, pecking at Jacob’s offered lips. Because this might be the last time. Jacob tells him to hurry back, and be safe out on the roads.

Staci laughs in his face.

He’s watched again as he heads out to his car. Jacob hasn’t stepped foot outside the trailer since the Marshals were last here. And though Staci has been in and out a couple of times, he’s spoken to no one. Just felt the curious eyes tracking his every move.

Driving into town, he leaves the windows down. The air is getting cooler now, with the sharp drop off in temperature that welcomes in Autumn properly. Staci keeps the buttons on his cuffs done up to stay warm, even though his nervous energy tells him to roll them up to the elbow, where he’s usually more comfortable.

He puts the car into park by the side of the general store, considering making quick work of getting in and out. But the Pastor and Mary May have called another four times between the two of them. Sent him too many text messages to even count. And if he doesn’t tell them that he’s fine, they’re liable to show up at the trailer park.

Heading to the church first, Staci shoves his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. The Pastor might not even be in right now. It’s ten in the morning and he’s sure to have other places to be.

But when Staci steps through the doorway, Jeffries rushes over to meet him. Grabbing Staci by the shoulders he breathes, “Thank God, you’re alright.” Jeffries pulls him tightly into a hug. 

“Yeah,” Staci huffs, “I’m fine.”

Jeffries’ eyes are dark, his brow heavy, as he pulls back, “I heard….”

“Don’t ask,” Staci whispers, “don’t ask, please.”

And Jeffries doesn’t, dropping his hands from Staci’s shoulders to hang loosely at his sides. “If anything happens, you call me. Understand?”

Staci can just as well take care of himself when it comes to Jacob. It’s not _Jacob_ who scares him. 

“I will...don’t worry.” He quickly makes excuses for himself, saying he’s got to get to the store. Probably won’t be able to help Jeffries around the church for a bit. But once things settle down, he’ll come by.

—

After Staci sets the bags of food on the counter, Jacob tells Staci to scram, he’ll take care of putting everything away. Staci sits at the table, watching as Jacob moves about the kitchen, finding no organization to Staci’s mess and coming up with a solution of his own.

At the bottom of one bag, Staci stuffed the thin-papered circular with printed full-color advertisements for properties around the county. Jacob fishes it out when he’s done with the groceries, flipping through. “You should decide…”

“Your idea,” Staci counters. “We don’t have to worry about money, right? So we should buy something fast. For cash. Get out of here before someone calls the Marshals.”

“Oh, they’ve called already,” Jacob doesn’t look up from the circular, eyes narrowed to read the small typeface. “But that doesn’t mean the Marshals are coming out anytime soon. We probably have a week or two.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Staci has had a little time now to scan the news stories about Jacob’s escape. And it’s true, there isn’t nearly as much coverage as there was when John broke loose. Like someone is trying to keep the noise down about Jacob. Even though he’s the one considered violent, unpredictable. Everyone who lived through Hope County knows that John is the sadist, not just the pretty, abused Omega (though he is that too) the press made him out to be. But that doesn’t exactly make Jacob safe either.

“We ran distractions for each other, start a riot in High, suddenly the guards at FCI are in a panic. Combine that with enough staff that’s sympathetic….John gets out.” Jacob shrugs. “I don’t know the details beyond that. My only task was to make trouble….then after I got out of medical, I was gonna be transferred out of Florence. Couldn't put me back in general population. Too many inmates saw which guards looked the other way when I acted up the first time. The Warden knew he was fucked. And John already had the driver of my transport in his pocket.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Staci hisses. “The whole fucking world has gone to shit.”

“It was shit already,” Jacob counters. “How do you think Eden’s Gate started a sovereign state on U.S. soil in the first place? No one fucking cares about us, Pratt. No one.”

Staci doesn’t know who the “us” is that Jacob means. And he doesn’t want to know.

“We have another issue,” Jacob starts, his voice softer now. “I can’t exactly get to a doctor here. Unless there’s someone you trust?”

“What’s wrong?” Staci narrows his eyes. Other than Jacob’s hand, which is a mess, but a healed mess, nothing seems that wrong with him. At least, nothing new.

“Inhibitors,” he says, “I’m three, uh maybe four days off now. The sooner, the better.”

“Right,” Staci nods, then asking, “you want to stay on them?”

“You surprised?” Jacob smiles, leaning against the edge of the countertop with his arms crossed over his chest, the circular still held tight in his good hand, “you know, just because I was in prison doesn’t mean I was forced to take them. I could still make my own health decisions. I _want_ to be on them, I don’t like the man I become when I’m not.”

Staci freezes up as he remembers the cascade of Jacob’s sins. The animal that Joseph sought to control, to wield as a weapon. But also the man who chose, _who chose_ to devour his friend, rather than offer his life up in return. The one who bit Staci’s neck in a cloud of Lust, not even knowing what he did until they both climbed back out of Staci’s heat.

“I’ll figure something out,” Staci mumbles, though he has no idea what that solution is.

Staci spends the afternoon sprawled out on the couch. Jacob sits at the other end, Staci’s legs thrown over his lap and the television on. The noise rumbles in the background while Staci searches on his phone, trying to figure out what to do about inhibitors. 

He finds a distributor that will ship pharms up from Mexico. He’s pretty sure it’s not strictly legal...but it might be the easiest way to solve Jacob’s problem. Shipping them overnight is exorbitantly expensive, but it’s not like money is an object. Just discretion.

“How much do you weigh?” Staci asks, starting to fill out the online order form.

“About two-ten, why?”

“Fucking hell,” Staci mumbles under his breath. He maxes out at one-sixty when he’s healthy. But is probably much less at the moment. And it’s absolutely not his fault that he feels a sort of thrill in that difference. That Jacob really is so much bigger than him. Probably because of some biological bullshit that he normally doesn’t have to think about. “Trying to get the right dosage. You want oral, right?”

Jacob snickers, “Wouldn’t say no.”

Staci almost orders injectable just to spite Jacob. But he hits the radio button for the capsules instead. Even with “overnight” shipping, that probably really means three or four days for the package to make it to the park. Which means Jacob will be a full week off. Staci didn’t really have withdrawal symptoms until about twelve days off his suppressants. But he doesn’t know if that’s the same for Alphas.

“End of the week, probably. Is that going to be a problem?” Staci asks.

Jacob says, “I can control myself. Don’t worry. I’ll be careful not to throw.”

There’s a strange feeling in Staci’s gut, an anxiety about it. Because even if Jacob isn’t actively throwing his scent, he and Staci sleep wrapped up against each other through the night. Staci is going to smell him for sure. Mountain air and fresh sap and crinkled leaves.

—

It takes until the next day for Jacob to mark a property in the paper, leaving the wrinkled circular out on the kitchen table. Staci calls the number while Jacob cooks. The current owner is looking to off-load quickly. He hasn’t been back to the cabin since the War (which he missed altogether, funeral in Eugene the day it started, what luck) and has finally admitted that he’s not coming back.

Staci offers him the full asking price, up front, in cash, if he can find an agent to complete the sale early next week. The owner fumbles for a moment, telling Staci he’ll call him back, he needs to call someone.

“Good,” Jacob says from the kitchen, “Sooner the better.”

“Don’t like such close quarters?” Staci asks, setting his phone aside. Today, he actually feels hungry, like his stomach is starting to expand to accept actual food again.

“Want the privacy.”

Staci’s due in Fall’s End to help the Pastor today. That will at least give Jacob a little breathing room, though he’s still not entirely comfortable about leaving Jacob alone. If the Marshals come, there’s nothing Staci can do about it, except maybe cry like Jacob told him. Part of him wants them to drag Jacob away. To accomplish what Staci cannot do himself, get Jacob Seed out of his fucking life. But the idea of coming back and finding Jacob gone doesn’t sit well with him either. 

—

Jacob is a week off his inhibitors when his scent breaks subtly through. He’s not throwing. He said he wouldn’t. But Staci has his head in Jacob’s lap, playing on his phone while Jacob watches tv. They have to wait for the inhibitors to come in the mail, since Staci gave this address, but they’ve closed on the plot of land just south of Snowshoe Lake. They haven’t even gone to see the house, but apparently it’s going to need a lot of work.

“Something to occupy my time,” Jacob says about the probable repairs. “Can’t just watch TV all day.”

Once or twice, they’ve actually caught a blurb on the news about him. Or John. Or usually both him and John about their escapes. But the Marshals still haven’t come back. Jacob’s right. No one gives a fuck about Hope County. No one ever has.

With Staci’s head in Jacob’s lap, he catches the tendrils of his scent, welling up against his skin. Crisp and clean, though still tempered by an artificial bite of inoffensive musk.

“Sorry,” Jacob mumbles, threading the fingers on his fucked up hand through Staci’s hair. “Is it bothering you?”

“No,” Staci says, carefully pushing himself up so he can press his nose to Jacob’s throat, “am I bothering you?”

“No,” Jacob sighs, putting his hand at the back of Staci’s neck. As much as Jacob joked about fucking Staci every day, they haven’t done anything but share a bed since Jacob ate him out and fucked him with his fingers.

Staci throws his leg over Jacob’s lap, letting himself sit properly over Jacob’s thighs. Wrapping his arms around Jacob’s neck, he keeps his nose close to where his scent is the strongest and just breathes, relaxing as Jacob rubs his back.

Scents connect to memories right? And Jacob’s brings back such pain, such terror, that Staci wonders why he finds it so comforting now. Why he also remembers Jacob fucking him through his heat, soft touches and promises. Jacob in the attic, captured and terrified himself. The farmhouse. Jacob’s cruelty and affection in those months of the war tangled together.

“I don’t really want this,” Staci says, his eyes closed. “I want to be in control...but…”

“I don’t mind,” Jacob says, “once the inhibitors come, I’ll take them. But don’t feel bad about this now.”

“This is what got us in trouble in the first place,” Staci says. But then he corrects, “I mean...more trouble than….fuck.”

“Can’t change that now,” Jacob says grimly. Staci feels it as Jacob kisses into his scalp. His beard is a little longer now, the sharp hairs pressing against Staci’s skin where they poke through his hair.

Staci picks his head up, pressing his mouth to Jacob’s dragging them into a deepening kiss. Having nowhere to grab with Jacob’s hair so short, he cradles the back of Jacob’s head instead, the stubble scraping against his palms.

Jacob slides both his hands under Staci’s shirt, rubbing up and down his spine until Staci shivers in his lap, arousal skittering over his skin. The longer that they kiss, they touch, the wetter Staci gets. It’s the smell too. A piece of unintentional conditioning Staci never broke. Fuck.

“I…” Staci isn’t sure he should say it, “I want you to fuck me.” So in the end, he keeps it to himself.

“Mmm, what else do you want?” Jacob drops one hand out from under Staci’s shirt, grabbing the meat of his ass instead and moving his fingers just right to press against his hole. If he pulls the fabric taut like that, pressing against Staci’s core, the slick will start to soak the fabric of his jeans.

“Your knot,” Staci gasps as Jacob rubs his thumb against his hole. Somehow the layers of fabric between them, the friction of it, make everything more intense. Or maybe it’s just the dull throb of Jacob’s scent, clinging now to Staci’s clothes as they rut together.

“Get into bed,” Jacob growls, slapping Staci’s ass to coax him back off his lap. Right, bed. Because knotting on the couch would be tremendously uncomfortable and they’ve already got a knack for picking the absolute worst positions.

Staci scrambles off, stripping as he heads towards the bedroom. It only takes a few steps to reach it, but he tosses his shirt in Jacob’s face for good measure. 

Jacob takes the opportunity to strip as well. Not bothering to turn off the lights and giving Staci a full show of his scarred chest and the definition around his hips and waist.

Staci flops down on the bed, wasting no time in spreading his legs so Jacob can fit between them. Once Jacob’s weight threatens to swallow Staci up, Staci grabs tight to Jacob’s shoulders, kissing into his chest as Jacob rubs his cock against his leg.

“I miss,” Jacob gasps, slipping his cock against Staci’s wet rim, “I don’t know what I miss. Because I still think you’re _mine_.” Jacob’s cock finds its target, sliding in smoothly from all the slick that has already pooled in anticipation. Staci bites his nails into Jacob’s shoulders, letting himself breathe into the intrusion. “You were meant to be _mine_.”

Staci draws breath, coughing into Jacob’s chest when he takes the scent too quickly. Jacob doesn’t smell like he did when they were mated. The warmer undercurrent of Staci to Jacob’s fresh open air isn’t there. 

Staci never was quite sweet.

“You said, that if one mate dies violently, it will hurt the other,” Jacob whispers against Staci’s now open mouth. Their lips brushing together on every syllable. 

“That’s...what I read…”

Jacob glides inside of him, the thickness of his cock holding Staci open, coaxing pleasure on every stroke. Deep and full and with just enough edge to make Staci writhe in the sheets. He starts rolling his hips to meet Jacob head-on. Never quite content to hold still when he could be taking more.

“Never ask me, Peaches. Promise you’ll never ask,” even as Jacob’s teeth move against his neck.

“I won’t,” Staci screws his eyes shut as he angles his hips, Jacob quickening his pace in response. “I can’t…”

“Good, because I won’t know how to say no.”

In response, Staci tilts his head and bites into the flesh of Jacob’s throat, because that won’t change anything between them.

—

Jacob’s pharms arrive, and they pack up what Staci doesn’t want to leave behind. Mostly his clothes, shoes, his cell phone charger. Nothing else really matters. He walks down to the registration office alone, pays the property manager what it’ll cost to have the trailer removed from the park. Giving her the keys, he says she or anyone else can take what they want from inside. He doesn’t care.

She looks at him funny, but doesn’t argue. Just takes the keys and the cash. Telling Staci to stay safe. He shrugs his shoulders, heading out to the car where Jacob is waiting for him. That is, if no one ran out of one of the other trailers and stabbed him first.

But Jacob is in one piece in the driver’s seat, waiting for Staci to buckle in. Staci almost demands he get back out so that he can drive. But whatever, the property is far away and if Jacob wants to take the winding mountain roads, he’s welcome to them.

It’s colder up in the mountains, the temperature low enough to form black ice in the shady patches where the sun can’t melt it fast enough. But Jacob doesn’t steer them wrong, even if he’s going a little faster than Staci would like. They’ve never actually been to the property. Just seen photos. Too risky to cart Jacob anywhere, and Staci wouldn’t know what to look for.

The only real delay is when they come across a moose blocking their path. Neither of them are stupid enough to try and get the shit to move, so they have to just wait it out, the mountain fog hanging on well into the late morning as they listen to the radio.

Jacob spots the gravel path where they’re supposed to turn. Staci’s car was purchased with the intention of suburban streets in Colorado Springs, not the steep incline and shoddy traction that Hope County offers up in spades. Still, once Jacob floors the gas, they manage to climb up the driveway. After that, the path levels out enough, taking them further from the road and towards the cabin that’s supposed to be set back into the lot.

Staci tries not to think about how close they are to where the broken Wolf Beacon stood. Where he went into is second heat in just as many months. There are a lot of events, moments Staci might point to, explain as the catalyst when things went from “pretty fucking fucked,” to “there is no recovery beyond this point.” If he was asked to choose, he wouldn’t say when Jacob bit him, though that would be the logical answer. 

But instead, Staci would say when he walked out to the mountain stream as Jacob repaired the beacon. Wondering if this was his last chance to escape. And by escape, he really knew it would be choosing death. Jacob might not kill him, but the mountain would. To this day, Staci isn’t sure what he would chosen for himself. If he would have stayed with Jacob, or taken his chance with the mountain.

Didn’t get to decide, because Jacob trotted after him. More a dog than a wolf. Asked him to stay where Jacob could smell him. And Staci said that he was there to die. But Jacob wouldn’t be the one to kill him.

That, of all moments in this fucked to charade, is the one Staci would point to, as the second he lost himself to Jacob Seed. Because Jacob was lost too. And Staci realized then, that neither he, nor Jacob, have ever learned what it means to be _kind_.

The taps in the cabin don’t work. Neither does the electricity. The roof is full of leaks. But it’s warmer inside than out, so at least the cabin is insulated enough they won’t freeze tonight. As if they’d ever make it to winter.

Jacob tosses the coat he stole somewhere between Florence and Hope County over Staci’s shoulders to keep him warm.

“I might be able to fix the plumbing,” Jacob frowns, “but the electricity, someone from the power company will have to come out. Reattach the property to the mains. And we need to buy a generator.”

Staci nods. He still doesn’t really fucking care.

“Last owner left everything, right? See if there’s a toolkit in the shed.”

Staci huffs, but heads outside. The shed isn’t terribly large, six by six and squat. It’s locked, and they weren’t given a key for it. But Staci finds a suitable rock and smashes the shit out of the latch until it gives.

He looks for what appears to be a standard, capable workman’s toolbox. Fuck all if he knows. Hell, there aren’t a lot of occupational opportunities in rural Montana and now that he thinks about it, becoming a sheriff's deputy might have just been an effort to dodge a manual labor job.

Hauling the toolbox back to the house, Jacob meets him halfway there. Jacob reaches out to take the handle, telling Staci, “come with me, I’ll need a hand.”

Staci winces, realizing Jacob probably means that quite literally.

Jacob finds the pump that draws up from the well and tells Staci to take a seat. He’ll let him know when he needs him. Even with the reduced dexterity in his left hand, Jacob is more than capable of fiddling with the water pump. A couple of times, he needs Staci to hold a washer and bolt in place until he gets the threading started. But otherwise he tends to shoo Staci away.

There’s not really anywhere to sit, other than on the ground. It’s cold, but mostly dry. And Staci sits with his knees curled up towards his chest, watching Jacob work.

“You still got that IUD in?” Jacob asks, not even looking up from where he’s finally got the pump going. Pulling up water to feed the pipes in the house. If the gas is on, they’ll have hot water in a couple hours.

“Yeah,” the question is such a non sequitur that Staci can’t help but answer before thinking about why Jacob might me asking.

“Okay,” Jacob starts packing up the tools to haul them back inside. He frowns before continuing, “good. That’s good.” But the tone of his voice is unsteady.

Staci pushes himself up off the ground, ready to follow after Jacob, already heading back into the house. As if he didn’t just drop a fucking nuclear bomb of a question.

“Why do you care?” Staci asks, softer than he intends. “Why the fuck does it matter?” This time, his voice has suitable venom.

Jacob sighs, still facing towards the house, away from Staci coming up from behind. Stopping in his tracks, Jacob’s shoulders drop, giving Staci the opportunity to dash around and get in front of him. Despite the smallness of his stature, Staci feels about ten feet tall in this moment. If only because Jacob appears so hesitant.

“Why does it matter?”

“Why do you think, Pratt?” Jacob shows his teeth, lips curled back.

Staci snarls, ready to beat him down, “it would be fucking stupid and you know it. We are not Caleb and John. We’re not idiots with no self control we’re not—“

“In love, I know,” Jacob finishes Staci’s thought. “I’m just not fully inhibited yet,” some of Jacob’s aggression levels out. “You...never mind.”

“No,” Staci tries to calm himself as well. Strangely eager now to make Jacob say it. “What do I do to you?”

Jacob sighs, looking away from Staci and up into the mountains that surround them now. Their isolation finally hits Staci full force. They’re all alone.

Laughing bitterly, Jacob starts, “You really are a goddamn brat. You wanna know?” His voice fades out. “You’re too fucking pretty, smell too good, fight too much. World keeps trying to kill you off. I tried to kill you. Hell, _you_ keep trying to get yourself dead. But it doesn’t matter, does it? At the end of the fucking world, it’ll be cockroaches, rats, and _Staci_ fucking Pratt. So, I figure, it’s not my fault entirely, that I’d want to put a kid in you. Now, let’s go inside. I wanna see if the faucets work.”

Jacob steps to the side, circumventing Staci’s blockade, and heads inside the house.


	12. Chapter 12

After the plumbing, Jacob’s next order of business is patching the roof. Over the next few days he makes steady work of repairing the damage. Staci can hear him stepping around up there while he tries to find busy work for himself inside.

Staci calls into the electric company about restoring power to the cabin. They need a new generator too, the old one is missing. Jacob says some of his people probably took it during the war. 

He tries to get Jacob to pick out the right generator, but it’s a lost cause. Jacob can’t read anything on Staci’s phone, much less navigate between listings, even when Staci zooms in all the way for him. Staci just barely manages to order something before the battery on his phone runs out.

When the tech from the electricity company pulls into the drive, Jacob says he’s going for a walk. Just fucking disappears into the trees like a goddamn cryptid and Staci wonders if this is how myths like bigfoot start. Fucking, six-foot-two, federal fugitive, ginger alphas roaming through the forests when the electrician shows up.

Staci just points the tech in the right direction and lets him to it. He’s just grateful he’s finally going to be able to charge his phone. Having television will be nice too. He’s been out of entertainment the last couple of days, other than watching Jacob work.

It takes a solid two hours before the tech has the cabin back on the grid. Staci doesn’t pay anything upfront for the visit. It’ll just get tacked onto his monthly bill that he pays online. He pretends to care how much it’ll cost. But at this point, he’s stopped worrying about the account. Embezzled funds are pretty far down the list of shit he’s going to prison for.

About twenty minutes after the tech drives away, Jacob emerges from the brush, two dead hares in his good fist. Staci didn’t hear any gunshots. And Jacob doesn’t have a gun of his own and Staci is pretty sure his is in his bedside table where he left it this morning. Which raises all sorts of questions about how Jacob caught the rabbits.

But Staci decides not to question it because he actually kind of likes rabbit as long as it’s cooked well enough. 

—

Jacob puts him on his back, pressing Staci’s shoulders against the mattress as he tries to arch up to grind his cock between Jacob’s legs. God, it’s been so long since Staci has gotten to _fuck_ someone. And while Jacob’s near-obsession with sucking him off has been a welcome surprise, as far as Staci knows, Jacob is entirely hetero-dynamic and that typically translates to ass-off-limits but, God, God, God, does Staci want to _give it to him_.

Staci makes his best attempt to shove right back, grabbing hold of Jacob’s bicep with one hand and pressing the other to his opposite shoulder. He tries to shove Jacob so that he’ll get on his back, a position he’s never particularly fought against. Content enough to let Staci ride him.

Getting the idea, Jacob flops back against the mattress, pliant while Staci scrambles over top of him. But instead of sinking down on Jacob’s cock, Staci sits over his abdomen instead, letting the length of Jacob’s dick curl up against the small of his back. From this position, it would be so easy to slide his cock down Jacob’s throat, utterly choke him on his dick. Jacob would most likely go along, relish in it, even. He seems to like it when Staci pulls his hair when he fucks his face. But Staci still wants to fuck his ass. To feel that ceded power from Jacob. It’s a thrilling, heady feeling, making an alpha _beg_. Not to be allowed to knot or come or care. But to be _inside_. To give what they expect to provide.

Staci leans over Jacob’s chest, planting his hands on Jacob’s shoulders to support his weight. Jacob can more than bear him. He rubs his cock against the flat of Jacob’s stomach, slick leaking over Jacob’s lap as Jacob reaches around to finger him.

Jacob’s eyes are blown wide already, just watching Staci move in the low-light of the room. The roof is patched now. Jacob said he’s going to move on to fixing some of the furniture that suffered in the years the cabin was left vacant. Staci doesn’t care one way or another. He still hasn’t accepted that they’re going to last the winter here. But if the roads ice over, maybe Jacob is right, and they’ll be left alone until spring. Staci has already started bringing up non-perishables from Fall’s End. Coupled with Jacob’s skill at hunting, they won’t have a problem when it comes to food.

“I want to fuck you,” Staci breathes into Jacob’s ear, tightening his hands around Jacob’s shoulders until his nails cut into freckled skin. Jacob is scars and burns and freckles everywhere. Perfect as a mangled mess of meat.

Wrapping one hand around Staci’s hip, Jacob keeps the fingers of his good hand in Staci’s hole. The stretch is pleasant, arousing, but not what Staci wants right now. “What do you think we’re doing, Pratt?”

“Noooo,” Staci draws out the vowel sound. “I want to _fuck you,_ ” he can’t help but push back on Jacob’s fingers. Though it would help him make his point if he pulled off. “I want to be _inside you_.”

Jacob’s eyes widen just a fraction more, as if the thought has never once occurred to him. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe no one has ever asked. 

It’s a low blow, but Staci is so hot for it, he takes the risk, “Don’t you want to take care of me?”

Choking on his own spit, Jacob tries to cover his mouth so he doesn’t cough onto Staci still perched above him. Once his breathing levels out, he groans, “Pratt, you’re trying to fucking kill me.”

Staci grins down at him, knowing that at the very least, Jacob is _thinking_ about it. That’s a start. Staci hitches his hips to rub his cock across Jacob’s abs again, ready to pull dirty tricks to get his way.

Jacob Seed doesn’t scare him. Staci’s desire, his Lust for Jacob might. The terrible, awful way he wants someone who has ruined him. That his fear has morphed into something closer to rage. The affection he dredges up shouldn’t temper his anger. Yet it does. God, he almost feels like himself again spread out across Jacob’s lap.

“Let me,” Staci purrs, dragging his nails down Jacob’s chest, leaving the faintest of red welts behind on pale skin. Working outside turns Jacob a sort of ruddy color, darkens his freckles so they look burnt. But Staci can’t think of him as anything other than fair. “Jacob, let me.”

“Would need lube,” Jacob points out the obvious. They haven’t brought any. Staci doesn’t have any trouble getting wet for him now. He drags his injured hand to the side of Staci’s neck, wrapping his fingers loosely around, thumb pressed against Staci’s adam’s apple. 

Staci hums, “Could use my slick,” it’s filthy, and Staci has never tried it that way before. But he’s seen it in porn and, God, it looks fucking hot. Jacob must agree because beneath him he groans, the grip around Staci’s neck tightening. “I want to do it,” Staci offers, “want to stretch you open, yeah?” He tilts his head in the direction of Jacob’s hand, leaning into the grip around his neck. Jacob will say yes, Staci is certain now.

Jacob starts to move, pushing at Staci to get off his lap. They both scramble until Staci is between Jacob’s thighs. Jacob bends his knees, corralling Staci into the cage of his long legs. They’re just as scarred and textured as the rest of him, lash marks over the backs of his thighs and ass. Staci never asks about them. Doesn’t ask about any stories left behind on Jacob’s skin. Documentation of his failures. At least, that’s what Jacob surely thinks.

Reaching behind his back, Staci shoves three fingers into his ass. Jacob had already worked in two, and his are thicker, longer than his own. Staci thrusts them inside, trying to curl them just right so he drags excess slick back out, coating his fingers thoroughly. 

Once his fingers go into Jacob’s ass, he shouldn’t put them back inside his hole. So he strokes his own cock with his slickened fingers first, hoping that it will at least stay a little wet while he fingers Jacob open. 

He dips into his hole once more, working more slick out before neatly circling Jacob’s rim. Below him, Jacob’s pulse in thunderous, his entire body taut and tense. Staci can’t even try to slip his finger in, he knows Jacob isn’t about to budge.

“Let me in,” Staci coos, petting Jacob’s scalp with his dry hand. His hair is starting to grow back now. As thick and vibrant as before. “Jacob, please,” he doesn’t mean to sound so needy, so desperate. But he wants this. Wants it bad.

“Why?” Jacob asks, his voice already hoarse. And they haven’t done a thing yet.

“Why?” Staci, for once, doesn’t think too much of the question. “It feels good. It feels good for me, and I think it’ll feel good for you too. It’s something different, a little exciting,” he bites his bottom lip. Is there some particular word or reason Jacob is searching for?

Jacob’s hands come to wrap around Staci’s biceps, holding him in place with Staci’s fingers still pressed against him, “You need this?” 

Staci swallows hard, does he? “No, but I want it.”

Jacob nods, dropping his head back against the pillow and letting go of Staci’s arms. His whole body goes pliant after that, soft and loose in comparison to the tension he couldn’t shake before. Something about the complete surrender shakes Staci. It’s too odd, out of character. Makes him afraid of the things they never talk about.

“Jacob…”

“I want you to be happy,” he says, his voice distant, emotionless. 

Maybe they should stop.

But Staci doesn’t stop, just stays silent as he starts to push slowly in. One finger at first, curling the second back towards his palm to keep it out of the way. His fingers are thin enough that just the one slides in easily with his slick, now that Jacob isn’t fighting him. But, God, he doesn’t want Jacob to just lay there either. He thinks, maybe if he can make it feel _good_ he can chase away whatever demon is haunting Jacob’s bones.

“I’m going to add another,” Staci warns him, waiting for Jacob to grunt before pressing his two fingers together and starting to sink inside. Two fingers are met with only slightly more resistance than the one, Jacob slowly, slowly opening around him as he starts to spread. “How does it feel?” Staci whispers in the darkness.

Jacob is still staring at the ceiling. Eyes open. Body unmoving, “I’m fine, keep going.”

Frowning, Staci wraps his other hand around Jacob’s cock, not entirely flaccid but not all that interested either. He gives it a couple of strokes. But Jacob doesn’t respond in kind. Staci is about to call the whole thing a wash. They can forget about it and tomorrow Jacob can use his mouth on him until he can’t see straight. But then he gets the bright idea of curling forward, not quite putting Jacob’s cock into his mouth, but licking long, slow strokes across it, humming as he does.

Jacob seems to at least respond to that, moaning, however softly, when Staci swipes with a second pass along the length of his swelling cock. 

“Better?” Staci asks, his fingers still wedged inside. The head of Jacob’s cock is flush enough that Staci takes it into his mouth, sucking softly without sinking down.

“Pratt…” reaching out, Jacob grabs hold of his hair. Not pulling, just holding, his knuckles firm against Staci’s scalp.

Popping off of Jacob’s cock, Staci suddenly thinks it’s important, “You never call me ‘Staci.’”

“Did once,” Jacob responds, his back starting to arch up off the mattress as Staci spreads his fingers, pushing in and dragging back out. Working his slick as deep inside as he can. Trying to find Jacob’s prostate in the process. His fingers might be too short. “Didn’t seem to like it.”

“Don’t remember,” Staci admits, “try again…” he’s long past any hang-ups about his name. Heard it all, mixed in with crueler taunts as a kid. Somewhere, along the line, Staci decided that it was fighting against his name that made him look weak, not the name itself.

“Staci,” Jacob curls the name out of his mouth, “Staci.”

His cock is hard now, even without the aid of Staci’s mouth. Heavy and flush against his stomach. But Staci wants another taste. He’s never particularly cared for giving head. Though under the right circumstances, he can be convinced. And the pleasure-choked noises Jacob tries to hold back are nothing if not convincing. 

“Hmm,” Staci pulls back, watching Jacob as his skin begins to redden. “I think you’re ready to take my cock.” He wants to say more, tease Jacob a little. Ask him if he’s ever taken an omega dick. Ever been put in his place and ridden hard. But Staci doesn’t want whatever tenuous bubble they’ve climbed inside to burst.

“Do it,” at least this time, Jacob’s intonation isn’t deadened. There’s something else behind the stoic syllables. Excitement, maybe, but that might just be in Staci’s head.

Pulling his fingers out, he wipes them against the sheets before grabbing hold of his cock. “You need to help me,” he whispers against Jacob’s cheek as he leans forward, pressing against where he’s just slightly open. “You need to want me, Jacob, please.”

Jacob doesn’t answer him, but turns his head so their mouths meet. A crash of lips and teeth and Lust. This has always been about Lust, hasn’t it? Staci’s, Jacob’s, their refusal to move on. Jacob holds him by the back of his head, keeping them close, tangled together as Staci breaches him. There’s resistance, but only enough to remind Staci how tight Jacob really is. Hot and constricting around his cock. Just wet enough with Staci’s slick that he can slide inside, their hips coming flush together as Jacob keeps their tongues occupied.

Devour.

Staci jerks back just enough that their kiss breaks. Pressing his forehead against Jacob’s instead. They’re both breathing like they’ve run miles and miles with no shelter in sight. At the back of Staci’s neck, Jacob’s fingers shake.

Pulling back just an inch, Staci starts to thrust, shallow at first. Smooth. He has a decent sized cock, in that he’s not any smaller than a similarly built beta. Mostly though, the difference in his size and Jacob’s should make the fit between them a comfortable one. But still, Jacob grunts on every movement. Not in pain, but surprise, maybe. Wonder?

Jacob pulls him in to kiss again, opening up Staci’s mouth as their hips gain momentum. Finally, finally Jacob starts rocking into him, chasing after each thrust as those little gasps begin to build. 

Staci snakes his hand between their bodies, starting to pull at Jacob’s cock. It feels fucking massive in his hand and dizzily he thinks about all the times it’s been inside him, filling him to the brim. His hole locked around Jacob’s knot. And here he is, pleasuring Jacob, buried as deep as he’ll go. Jacob breathing, “Staci, Staci,” like a prayer. As Staci strokes down again, he feels the base of Jacob’s cock starting to swell.

He’s perilously close as well, Jacob’s hole squeezing down on him, milking him on every hurried stroke. Letting go of Jacob’s cock, he focuses instead on reaching his own completion, hammering in with their bodies chest to chest, sinking back into the depth of Jacob’s kisses.

Staci comes, burying his head against Jacob’s chest as he spills. Lifting his head, he growls out, “knot me,” and Jacob is on him in an instant, flipping them both over so they switch positions, tossing Staci around as if he weighs nothing.

Jacob plunges in, the base of his cock almost too thick to fit inside. But Staci is relaxed and wet enough from his own orgasm that Jacob can force the start of his knot past Staci’s rim. He doesn’t thrust more than four times, Staci’s come dribbling down his inner thighs, before he starts to come himself, knotting Staci with an intensity that knocks the wind out of them both.

“Staci…” he presses a kiss into his hair, gathering him up into his arms so that they can find a position that doesn’t hurt either of them.

“Jacob,” Staci smiles despite himself, contented for the moment. Having gotten what he wanted. 

Jacob pushes Staci’s hair back behind his ear, “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Staci huffs, “easy, when you don’t know a person.” Though with each passing day, that sentiment rings less and less true.

—

There’s always something to fix in the house, or on the property, something to at least keep Jacob occupied. But eventually, there’s not enough reruns in syndication to keep Staci from boredom, and Jacob never really wants his help with the repairs.

When Jacob declares he wants to put a wooden fence around the house, Staci rolls his eyes and points out they don’t have a neighbor within five miles, and even then, the trees do a hell of a job of keeping prying eyes off of them. No fence is about to keep the Marshals out.

“Not for them,” Jacob corrects him, “for us, I want to do this for us.”

Staci huffs, but follows Jacob outside. If this is for “them” he wants to at least contribute.

First they need wood because the timber they have for the fireplace is cut too small to repurpose. Besides, Jacob already has a pretty good idea which trees he wants to fell. Marked them off a two weeks ago when Staci was busy with the tech from the power company.

Sure enough, tucked back about two-tenths of a mile from the house, but very much still on the lot they own, Jacob has put three big xs on the trees he wants. Spaced out well enough that there won’t be an obvious bald patch in the tree line.

Staci knows that there’s a proper way to cut down trees of their size. And while he _doesn’t_ know what that procedure is, he’s pretty sure that Jacob isn’t taking any of the necessary precautions. But he loops a length of rope around the middle of the tree, tying it off to two bigger trunks on either side, leaving just enough slack that as he cuts through his intended target, the tree starts to lean towards the ground without toppling over entirely. 

Once he’s got the trunk cut through, he tells Staci to watch the one side for slippage while he starts to loosen the other rope. It’s a slow process as Jacob moves from side to side, adding slack on each side so that the tree comes down slowly. While he always wants Staci to keep an eye on the tension in the ropes, he absolutely doesn’t want Staci doing any of the lifting.

It takes the better part of the morning to get the tree flat on the forest floor. But to Jacob’s credit, they’re both in one piece and so is the tree. Jacob wants to cut out the planks right there, rather than trying to drag the damn thing back to the house intact. There’s not much for Staci to do at the moment while he measures and saws. So Jacob sends him back to the house to make something for lunch.

They’ve got a bit of fresh food left that Staci brought up from Fall’s End. He plans on helping the Pastor at least once a week until the roads become a problem. Then, there will be no getting out, or into, the mountains safely. Every time he visits the church, he can feel Jerome’s questions, but none of them make it past the Pastor’s teeth.

He knows. And so does Mary May. They know he’s hiding Jacob here. And those two, more than anyone else maybe, know the price of leaving fires burning through the seasons. Of doing nothing and expecting the problem to go away. But...they care about Staci, maybe. Might be stupid enough to trust him. Hell if Staci actually knows. But Jacob Seed shouldn’t be here. Yet he remains.

Staci throws together some sandwiches, one for himself and two for Jacob. Just cheese and meat and the last tomatoes from the hot house over in the Henbane. He puts them out on the counter and waits for Jacob to wrap up for the morning. 

Jacob calls from outside, saying he’s too filthy to come in. So Staci carries both plates out, stainless steel water bottles from the fridge tucked under both arms. They sit on the porch, the slat-beamed overhang just barely keeping the noon sun off their backs while they eat. While the roads haven’t frozen yet, they’ve had frost the last couple of nights, and all the gnats died with it.

There’s a stack of planks over by the lines Jacob has marked off for the fence. When Staci notices them, Jacob says he wants to cut all the trees down first. But Staci can work on treating the logs. Lay them out flat, brush both sides with the waterproofing they found in the shed. Paint rollers would be faster, but he hasn’t found any. And by this point, they’ve pretty well picked over what was left behind.

Staci leaves the dishes in the sink for later. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work with the varnish. Laying out each board Jacob cut, he has to use the paintbrush to coat one side of each. It doesn’t take too long, but it’s tedious. And around two Jacob shows up with more planks in his arms. Staci coats those too and by six they’re both ready for dinner.

Too bone exhausted to complain, Staci lets Jacob drag him into the shower. It’s not really big enough for both of them. But Jacob is careful with his elbows as he insists on washing Staci’s hair. They’re both too tired to do much else other than actually get clean and dinner is just reheated burgers from the two pounds of ground chuck that Jacob cooked on the stove last night.

As they crawl into bed together, Staci buries his face against Jacob’s chest, Jacob’s arm slung around his waist. They have the furnace working fine, but Staci still likes the warmth of Jacob’s body. Soothing. His scent is fully gone, covered up by the pharms. Staci doesn’t mind, he feels safe either way. Even if the world is burning down around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jacob Seed is the most stubborn character EVER to get to bottom. But I finally fucking did it.


	13. Chapter 13

They finish the fence, Staci actually helping when it comes to slotting Jacob’s carefully cut and shaped planks in place. They knit together without needing nails. Staci wonders how Jacob even knows how to do shit like this. He was a soldier, a drunk, then Joseph’s dog. But he seems to have this innate ability to figure out how things are supposed to fit together.

Snow finally comes not long after. It’s only mid-October, but the elevation means cooler temperatures and earlier snowfall. The valley is probably still mostly green. But with the freeze, Staci finally accepts that Jacob was right. No one is coming for them. At least, not until the spring.

They’ve already carefully gathered supplies for the winter. Staci texts Jerome and Mary May that same morning that the roads are now too treacherous to drive. So they shouldn’t expect him again until the thaw. Mary May doesn’t text back, but Jerome does, repeating that if Staci has any trouble, he should call.

Jacob still hunts to pass the time, bundled up in a coat he found in the bedroom closet, thicker than the one he brought with him. It pulls a little tight around his shoulders, and he can’t zip it up, but combined with stretchy sweaters, he seems to keep warm enough. 

The bunker on the property is well stocked with ammunition, and Jacob cleans the hunting rifle he finds in the weapons locker. Staci never goes down into the hole. Doesn’t know what else is down there. Doesn’t care.

They’re not dependent on Jacob actually catching anything. They’ve got preserves and smoked meat and fishing is an option too. But hunting gives Jacob something to do now that the repairs are mostly done. 

Staci mostly entertains himself with hiking, fishing when he gets the chance. He’s a fine shot, but he doesn’t have the patience for tracking like Jacob does. Once or twice, Jacob expresses concern that Staci might get lost or hurt out on the mountain. They only have the one phone between them. Too dangerous to give Jacob something that can easily be tracked. But after awhile, he seems to realize that Staci is more than capable of handling himself out in the elements. With the regular meals, Staci is putting weight on too.

Joey calls him one morning in late November, his phone buzzing on the kitchen counter while he warms up venison strips on the stove. Her smiling face from before the war, wearing too much mascara, pops up on the screen and Jacob sees it first, leaning over to look at who it is. 

“You should take the call,” Jacob says, standing up to grab the spatula from Staci so he can watch the meat instead.

Staci isn’t even sure he wants to answer. But not picking up will just worry Joey. It’s been months since she’s called. Since...before John escaped. He just figured she thought Staci was involved somehow, because he was living with Caleb and everything. Decided to cut Staci off too.

“Joey?” he answers, stepping out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. Even if Jacob doesn’t say anything, the sounds of him cooking in the same room will clue Joey in that he’s not alone. She’s not dumb. 

“Hey, Stace,” she sounds tired. “I uh, sorry for not having called.”

“It’s okay,” he responds, “I haven’t exactly…”

“It is true?”

Staci freezes, phone in hand, in his socks and boxers and his favorite black and green flannel tossed over one of Jacob’s undershirts, Jacob cooking in the kitchen in the cabin that they share. Joey hasn’t even asked her question yet. But he can guess.

“What?”

Joey pauses, “Staci…”

“Who told you?”

“Mary May...fuck, Staci, fuck.”

“Joey listen,” panic creeps into his voice. “I--” but he has no excuse. 

“Did living with Caleb fucking _scramble_ your brain too? You’re so fucking...Staci, what are you doing?”

“Waiting on breakfast…” he answers like a smartass, even though Joey is right.

“He tried to kill you,” Joey hisses. She may have gotten along better with Jacob than she did with John at the time the brothers switched sides. But that was only because her hatred of John is this bottomless void of anger. Never filled. Jacob was useful for getting them all out alive. A tool as far as Joey was concerned. But now she is as reasonable as ever. “He _brainwashed_ you, Staci. You’re not thinking straight.”

“I am,” Staci chokes out. He’s not entirely sure really, if this is a logical decision. But he also doesn’t think it has anything to do with Jacob’s conditioning. After the war ended, Whitehorse and the department made sure he saw a specialist, Caleb too. To break the music box’s hold. 

Besides, it’s too late now.

“Staci...how do you think this ends? You think you get to fucking, run up into the mountains and play house for the rest of your life? You think that Ja-”

“Don’t say his name,” Staci interrupts. Paranoid that somehow saying Jacob’s name will bring the whole fucking National Guard down on the cabin right this fucking instant. 

“He tortured you. He maimed you.”

“He ruined me,” Staci admits.

Joey realizes her mistake, “I didn’t say that.”

“You asked me how I think this ends?” Staci takes a deep breath, “I think the thaw comes in the spring, and the Marshals follow after. I think they take Jacob away. I think I’m alone again.” Staci crouches low to the ground, letting the bed block the line of sight between him and the door. Feels safe, to be surrounded on three sides by the walls and the mattress. “But I don’t think I get better, Joey. If that’s what you’re asking. I don’t get better. With or without him.”

“You are so fucking stubborn,” Joey laughs without humor, “you always were.” Her voice softens, full of that pitying concern that Staci just hates. Even when it’s sincere. “You didn’t even give yourself a chance…”

“Maybe,” Staci admits, “maybe.”

They say their goodbyes. Staci is a little surprised that Joey doesn’t try to get another word in after that. Her next call may well be to the Marshals’ office, but it doesn’t matter. The roads are too dangerous, no one will come.

Jacob doesn’t check in on him. So Staci stays huddled in the corner of their bedroom a little while longer, knees and head tucked in towards his chest. In the other room, he can hear Jacob washing the frying pan, setting out plates of food. It’ll get cold if he doesn’t move. Making it to his feet, Staci wobbles a bit as the blood rushes back to his head. 

In the kitchen, he sits down across from Jacob, who doesn’t ask what he discussed with Joey. 

\--

When Staci was 18, he said he didn’t want a baby. He never did. He’d just as soon have his uterus removed now, to save the hassle later. Still would have to take suppressants for the scent, probably, but he wouldn’t heat anymore, ever. Wouldn’t have to worry about contraceptives.

His mother said he might change his mind, when he got older. Find someone he’d want to have a child with. He might fall so in love, and want to make his family complete. Staci shouldn’t be so rash, while still just a baby himself.

But Staci had insisted to her that a child wasn’t in his plans. He wanted to become a cop. Seemed as good a job as any, with steady pay and good benefits. Could afford to move out, support himself. Indulge in all the habits he couldn’t freely carry on at home. Staci had a plan, a great one.

Kept that plan through his early twenties. Didn’t have much trouble finding partners for sex, turned out hookup apps were fucking great. Didn’t really want more than that. He liked sex, _loved_ it. The power and control and pleasure. Watching his partner for the night fall to pieces while fucking into him. Or as he fucked into them. All of it was fucking great. 

A couple of times, he tried for more. Liked the other person well enough to go out on a few dates. But things always sort of petered out naturally. No big blow ups, no dramatic falls. Just a handful of dinners, fucks, and neither party calling the other back. Staci didn’t like it any more than hooking up.

He came back different from the war. Of course he did. 

Now, in the early winter, he watches Jacob try and file down chair legs to get them even, measuring every tiny fraction of an inch. Because he’s already checked the floors and made sure that’s level, so it must be the chairs themselves. If this doesn’t work, he says he’ll just build new ones from timber left over from the fence. Staci doesn’t doubt him. 

He watches Jacob and thinks about the child he still doesn’t want. That hasn’t changed. Staci’s thirty now. Jacob is just on the other side of fifty. But still strong, still capable. 

Staci thinks about the child he doesn’t want. Who wouldn’t have blue eyes or red hair, because Staci’s coloring is by far the more reasonable outcome. He knows from Mendel Squares. Maybe their brown eyes would be a bit lighter, their skin fairer, somewhere between his and Jacob’s. Might get Jacob’s freckles over their nose and arms. Might get his long limbs too. They both have a temper, a stubbornness. So the child would surely be a brat. A little terror on two legs.

Staci doesn’t want them. He doesn’t. It’s a stupid fucking idea. Besides, it’s not like he could get to a doctor before the Spring. And in the Spring, the Marshals will come for Jacob. Even then, even if they make it into Summer, or Autumn again….this can’t last. Everything ends. And when Jacob leaves, Staci will be left with a child who looks a little like them both. He can’t. _He doesn’t want._

But that doesn’t mean the drive isn’t there, sometimes. When he watches Jacob move. When he forgets their monstrous months together during the war. When he focuses on Jacob’s clumsy attempts to be good to him, after having been unspeakably bad. Staci thinks, maybe, this is the man Jacob truly is. Quiet, stubborn, practical, loyal. These are good things. Right? So why does Staci feel so wretched, for hoping the Marshals never come?

—

Christmas arrives like a field mouse, unobtrusive and barely worth considering. But Jacob cuts a tree and drags it inside. A small one, just taller than Staci by an inch. They have nothing to decorate it with, but Staci says he doesn’t care. He wasn’t even expecting this.

“You’re Catholic, right?” Jacob asks. 

They’re stuck watching Christmas specials on TV. Staci’s phone is plugged in over in the other room after he forgot to charge it last night. He doesn’t have an extension cord long enough to make it to the couch and he’s too comfortable leaning against Jacob’s side to move.

“I was raised Catholic,” Staci corrects. It makes a difference. Because he knows there are things about himself that are pretty well summed up by growing up going to mass every Sunday for eighteen years. Things that Jacob might think are odd. At least, he assumes the Seeds grew up some flavor of Protestant before Joseph’s “visions.”

“Don’t believe now?” Jacob asks, his thumb rolling against Staci’s neck.

Staci explains, “Believe in God. Don’t need a priest for that.”

“No,” Jacob huffs, “suppose not.”

Staci can’t help but feel there’s a question he’s supposed to ask. But he’s not sure what that is. And he’s scared of fucking up. Of getting no answer at all.

“Do you…believe?”

Jacob pulls his hand back to scratch his beard. It’s gotten long again. His hair too. Though he doesn’t have the patience to shave down the sides again. And he must know better than to even ask Staci to help him.

“No...I can’t say I...ever did.”

Of course not. 

Staci doesn’t expect for there to be presents either. That’s not the point. It’s not the same as last year, when he and Caleb had Delilah to think of. To try and feign something resembling a normal childhood for her. This is him and Jacob and an otherwise empty mountainside. They don’t have to pretend.

But Jacob hands him a little box, just big enough to stretch over the edges of Staci’s palm. Inside is a carved figure of a deer. More carefully detailed than Staci would think Jacob could manage with his big hands. It’s not perfect, still rough in places. But in a way that makes it look on purpose. So strange. An item of no use. Frivolous.

Staci thanks him, admitting that he has nothing to give Jacob in return. He wasn’t expecting this. 

“Don’t care,” Jacob says, “already have what I want.”

What?

A violent tremor, a fit of rage Staci doesn’t expect, grips him utterly. Uncontrollably. Dredging up buried panic Staci thought he had under control. That he thought he _managed_. Staci throws the little figure against the wooden cabin wall. One of the delicate legs snaps on impact, launching back towards Staci with the momentum it maintains from the initial crash.

Staci’s breathing heavy. Jacob standing still. But fuck him. _Fuck him_. This time Staci walked right into his fucking trap. Didn’t he? Did everything Jacob wanted, without the music box. Made Staci want to play house through the dark winter months. Prey. He’s the fucking deer to Jacob’s wolf.

Jacob makes no move to comfort him, still rooted firmly in place. But Staci is agitated now, distraught and jumpy, unable to hold still. Jacob tricked him. He did! Appearing in the middle of the night in Staci’s bed, holding him close, promising to be good to him. Promising things Staci isn’t allowed to have. Not after what Jacob did.

Rushing forward, Staci slams his hands into Jacob’s chest, trying to push him back towards the couch. Jacob doesn’t fight him, but Staci still doesn’t have the brute strength to make him move. He knows the holds, the takedowns, that will let him fell men bigger than even Jacob. But in his clouded rage, Staci can’t remember a fucking thing. 

“Get on the goddamn couch,” Staci screams. No one is around to hear them.

Jacob frowns at him, but listens, stepping back and sitting down. His knees spread wide as he leans back.

Staci snaps, “take your fucking dick out.” He’s just with it enough to know he’s crying, sobbing. Fat, ugly tears streaming down his face. “It’s the only thing your fucking good for.” That isn’t true. Only Staci wishes it were.

Stripping out of his sweatpants, Staci straddles Jacob’s lap, the fabric of Jacob’s sweats still bunched up around his groin. He only pulled the waistband down enough to pull out his flaccid cock and balls.

“Get hard you fucker,” objectively, Staci knows that throwing his fists against Jacob’s chest and screaming like a man possessed isn’t exactly going to get Jacob in the mood. Fuck. But he’s distraught and he wants...he wants something that isn’t Jacob’s gentleness. His hesitance. His _love_.

Staci expects some sort of smartass answer, a wicked smile. That ghost that haunts them both. That they could have been _good_ to each other. Instead of this. Instead, Jacob asks, “Can I touch you?”

The fight is already draining out of Staci. God, his face feels soaking wet. “Where?” 

“Here,” Jacob ghosts his hand down Staci’s side, close enough for Staci to feel its warmth, but not actually skin on skin. “Here,” Jacob does the same to the center of his chest. “Here,” he makes a cupping gesture near Staci’s chin, where he’s might hold his face in his hands. “Please.”

Staci wants to say no. At least, he thinks he should say no. He just wants to ruin himself on Jacob’s cock. Fuck himself on it like a goddamn perfect dildo until his hole is sore and aching. Until he screams himself hoarse. Until he’s punished himself well enough for being so fucking stupid. He doesn’t want Jacob to enjoy this. He doesn’t want to enjoy this himself. He wants to hurt. He wants to make the hurting stop.

“Yes,” Staci croaks.

Jacob does just as he showed Staci, this time touching the pads of his fingers to Staci’s side, brushing them up and down, up and down, until he shivers. He uses his broken left hand. The right he uses to stroke his cock. Trying to get hard for Staci. Once he’s satisfied with stroking Staci’s side, he moves to his chest instead. Tracing the barest pattern between Staci’s ribs, down to his navel, stopping above his groin.

Jacob is mostly hard by now, but still, he takes Staci’s cheek against his palm. Strokes his thumb just below Staci’s eye. And wow, stupidly, Staci thought he was done crying.

He goes through another round of wracked sobs, Jacob’s palm against his cheek. His right hand keeps on stroking. Because, after all, Staci wants him hard and Jacob isn’t about to disappoint.

“Say it,” Staci whispers, once he can control his vocal cords enough to speak. “Say it.”

“Won’t make things better, Staci.”

“Nothing makes this better, Jacob.”

“Hurts me too, you know,” Jacob tries to dodge.

And Staci admits, “I want to hurt you.”

Jacob winces, but gives in. He will always give in, now.

“I love you,” Jacob says, his heart heavy, resigned to his fate. “I love you.”

Staci bats Jacob’s hand away from his erection, making room for him to grab hold instead. He holds Jacob steady as he lifts his hips, starting to sink down on Jacob’s flared head. He’s not quite wet, and Jacob knows, trying to stroke Staci’s soft cock with his good hand, laying the other against Staci’s side, just above his hip. He doesn’t try to force Staci to stop, or hurry up. Just touches him, tries to ease him towards arousal, instead of just single-minded frustration bled through with grief.

Staci sits across Jacob’s lap, still not quite wet, but with the full thickness of Jacob’s cock opening him wide. He grabs hold of Jacob’s shoulders, using them for leverage to lift his hips up and slam himself back down. There’s too much friction, and he can’t help but cry out as he feels himself tear. He’s taken it too fast, he’s not aroused enough. But somehow, the knowledge makes him feel better. 

Jacob says nothing as Staci takes from him, works himself on Jacob’s cock, Jacob’s hands on him until the pressure eases up. He doesn’t want this to feel good. But it does, his body stretching to accommodate Jacob’s familiar girth. The length of him rubbing deep inside and helping the arousal coil inside Staci’s stomach. 

He doesn’t care if Jacob comes, besides his own satisfaction of getting Jacob’s knot. Getting the high that will follow from Jacob spilling inside of him. Letting his mind grow drowsy and forget why he’s so angry. He claws his hands into Jacob’s shoulders, grinding himself down. His knees hurt from how the couch cushions smoosh up too flat, the stuffing worn out, his limbs knocking against the wood and metal buried underneath. 

When he comes across Jacob’s chest, he growls that he hates him. Hates him so fucking much. Jacob says back, “I know, I know.” And Staci demands his knot. In case Jacob has other ideas. 

“Hit me,” Jacob says, “if it’ll make you feel better, do it.” His eyes are screwed shut and body tight. He’s close to release, his knot big enough that when Staci lifts up now, he doesn’t really go anywhere. But he keeps trying, pulling his rim further than it should stretch. 

Staci doesn’t know if it will help or not. But he’s wild, disjointed enough that he brings his open palm across Jacob’s cheek. Hard enough that the crack of impact vibrates through the cabin, Jacob’s head snapping to one side as he starts to come.

Staci sobs again, ugly and full of phlegm, already regretting what he’s done. His handprint angry and red against Jacob’s cheek, even if most of it is hidden by his beard. They’re stuck together now, ten, twenty minutes. Staci buries his face in Jacob’s shoulder, so he doesn’t have to look him in the eye.

As they’re tied, Jacob rubs his back. It would be different, if Staci felt better. But he doesn’t. He feels just as frayed and on edge as ever, until the high starts to creep in.

He manages to go loose in Jacob’s lap, arms still wrapped around his shoulders. But Jacob is doing most of the work to keep him upright and comfortable while they’re stuck on the couch. Jacob has the strength to lift him. Carry him off to the bedroom. But he doesn’t.

“Jacob,” the euphoria hits Staci hard. Maybe because he’s tired, or dehydrated. Or both. Or maybe because he doesn’t want to feel his hands or legs or heart. Letting himself slip under the dizziness that overcomes him. “I love you,” he slurs, head tipping back to show is throat. But Jacob made him promise not to ask. Staci can’t go through this again. “I love you.”

Jacob cradles the back of his head, pulling Staci towards him until his forehead rests against Jacob’s shoulder.

—

In the morning, Staci regrets. But Jacob doesn’t say a thing. It’s his turn to make breakfast. And by the time Staci wakes up, there’s already coffee on the table. Black, with sugar for Staci. He likes milk, but it doesn’t keep. And powdered creamer just doesn’t do it for him.

Fresh eggs are out too, but they have powdered, and Jacob can disguise the texture with enough hard cheese that Staci doesn’t complain. Plenty of bacon too. They’ve stored a bunch of bread in the freezer, to thaw as needed. Another few weeks and there won’t be anymore. But Staci likes toast. Likes starchy shit in general. Though Jacob really doesn’t.

Staci pours himself into the kitchen chair he usually occupies, watching Jacob as he finishes up. He plates the eggs and bacon, pours water from the filter in the fridge. Staci might kill for orange juice at this point. But he didn’t plan ahead for it. Another thing that Jacob doesn’t really like.

They eat in silence. Staci can still see the evidence of his hand on Jacob’s cheek. The whole thing won’t bruise, but there’s a little purple fleck over top of Jacob’s cheekbone, where Staci caught him with his knuckle or something. When Jacob finds him staring, he looks away.

“Don’t care. Doesn’t hurt now.”

Staci doesn’t want to finish his food. But that’s more likely to upset Jacob than having hit him across the face.

“I did worse to you.”

Understatement of the fucking century.

But Staci isn’t mad. At least he’s not right now, with his belly mostly fully and coffee starting to seep through his system and wake him up.

“Sometimes I…” Staci’s not sure how to explain to Jacob. Whenever he tried to talk about this with Joey or Caleb, they always told him not to think that way. Never tried telling his therapist. Because she wouldn’t have the same frame of reference. “I think maybe I died in the helicopter crash.” He tucks both of his hands between his thighs, letting the pressure of pushing inward serve to ground him. “Maybe we all died. Me, Joey, Whitehorse….Caleb. And the war….the war was our purgatory. The weighing of our sins.”

Jacob doesn’t move from his place at the table. Staring at Staci with those cold, blue eyes. 

“Why did you choose me, Jacob?” Staci asks. Suddenly quite concerned with the answer.

“Didn’t….all I cared about was that John didn’t take the Marshal. So I was ready to take responsibility for him….but Faith...Rachel...she picked Burke. I thought John would take you, but when he took Hudson instead, I was left with you.”

Staci snickers, “you didn’t want me then.”

“No,” Jacob admits, running his hand through his hair, “maybe I already knew I would want you too much.”

Staci passes Jacob his plate, letting him finish off the eggs he’s left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so we're super close to the end. The final chapter is a little longer than usual. But yeah.
> 
> I think I'm unlikely to continue writing this particular series afterwards, because I have no plot beyond the ending. I am, however, open to writing other j/s content. Most likely non-cult AU because uhhhhhh dealing with the cult and cult-aftermath is a fucking drag? But let me know what you think. I'm also likely to drop the a/b/o aspect. But I mean, I'm open to suggestion in regards to what people are interested in reading. I just like this pairing a lot.


	14. Chapter 14

Staci tells Jacob he loves him, once more, just as the thaw arrives. It’s been an unusually warm February, though not enough to clear the roads. But as the temperature creeps up, the stream in the back of their property starts to swell. And Staci knows, before much longer, the Marshals will come to their door. But not quite yet.

It’s the fourth of March. Sunny, clear, a little cold. Staci pulls on Jacob’s jacket, letting it swallow up his smaller frame. Jacob has been outside since breakfast, starting to clear the debris that chokes their plot. When the soil softens, they can plant.

But they won’t. They won’t have the time.

Staci hops up onto the fence they built together, leaving his boots on the bottom rung as he watches Jacob work. Some days are better than others, Staci thinks. He’s gotten mad again since Christmas. Not mad enough to hit Jacob. But mad _at_ Jacob, sure. Mad at himself, mostly. If he’s being honest.

But there are good days too. He’s not able to forget, or forgive. That’s just not possible. But Jacob will touch his waist, his hair, peck kisses against his shoulders, against his neck. And Staci thinks, oh God, this is what it means to be happy. It never lasts. It can’t. Yet there are moments, when it’s just him, and Jacob, and not the weight of their sins dragging them down. 

“I love you,” he says, watching Jacob pull up weeds that were frozen solid under the snow for months.

Jacob looks up, eyes wide and mouth closed, lips only parting when he says, “I love you too.”

Staci feels giddy, light. Hopping down from the fence and heading back inside to start on lunch. Afterwards, he thinks he might go fishing. Ask Jacob if he wants to come. The weeding can wait until tomorrow. 

Or never, because before he makes it to the door, Staci can hear a truck scrambling up the incline drive.

No...the roads shouldn’t be passable yet.

“Jacob,” he knows better than to shout, but makes sure he’s loud enough that Jacob hears.

Solemnly, Jacob stands, taking off the heavy canvas gloves he wears to protect his hands and dropping them in the dirt. He faces the driveway, but doesn’t head back inside the house.

In a panic, Staci runs for him, grabbing hold of his arm once he’s in reach and _pulling_. “Jacob, it’s the Marshals. You have to hide, you have to _run_.” It’s getting harder to keep his volume down. Jacob isn’t moving and it has to be now, now, now!

“We talked about this, remember?” Jacob sighs, pulling his arm free from Staci and looping it over his shoulder to pull him close. “Promised you I’d go. Remember to call Elijah. And use those waterworks of yours on the stand, crybaby.”

“No,” Staci hisses against his chest. “No, fuck the plan.” Because right now, every inch of him is screaming to make Jacob stay with him. He’s not ready. He’ll never be ready. This couldn’t end another way….

“It’s okay, Staci. It’s okay. Let go now. Get inside the house. You need to play captive. Remember?”

But it’s too late. The engine noise is too close and another second passes before the truck comes into view. Big and blue and definitely not belonging to the Marshals. Staci tries to calm his racing heart. Just because it’s not the Marshals, doesn’t mean they’re not here for Jacob.

Except Staci recognizes the driver right away, head of floppy, chestnut hair, bleached a little by the sun. 

Caleb.

And in the passenger side, John.

“No,” Staci says, “no, no, no.” The panic returns to his chest, full force. This isn’t _better_.

Jacob pulls him close again, sticking his nose into Staci’s hair. It’s dirty, he hasn’t showered in two days. Mostly because he just hasn’t gotten around to it and Jacob never seems to mind. 

“It’s okay, you should go say hello to Nylander.”

“Did you know?” Staci asks.

Jacob frowns, “No. But it’s not a stretch that John would know how to find us.”

Staci doesn’t know what kind of welcome Caleb is expecting. But when he pulls out from the shield of Jacob’s chest, it’s Delilah who runs at him first. She’s so much steadier on two legs than she was last June. Her dark hair tied up in a ponytail, swinging on every hurried step.

And God, his heart aches for her. She should be in preschool. She should be learning to read and playing with other children. This shouldn’t be her life. What is her life? Staci doesn’t know anymore.

Staci crouches down to reach for her, throwing his arms around her tiny frame and hoisting her up into his arms. She’s heavier now, of course she is. Kids grow fast. There’s this warmth inside Staci’s chest that she’s so, so happy to see him again.

“STACI!” she shouts at full volume, right next to his ear. But Staci doesn’t care, trying to laugh it off, though his ears ring.

“Staci,” Caleb this time, smiling faintly, John standing at his side. John’s face is slightly chubby, his waist thicker. Hasn’t lost the excess weight from the baby yet. A tiny bundle in John’s arms. A month old, no, maybe two. He would have been pregnant already when he escaped.

“Hi Caleb, John,” Staci carries Delilah over against his hip. She’s not struggling yet to be let down. 

Jacob follows behind him, hand on the small of Staci’s back, firm and reassuring.

Staci has to put Delilah down to hug Caleb. Warm, Caleb is still so warm, holding Staci close and playing with the hair at his nape. He smells too, sugary-sweet from his strange, off-kilter pheromones. Got even more cloying when he mated John.

John smiles, big and bright, his eyes crystal clear. The baby’s name is Esther. Another little girl. Blue eyes, like Delilah and John and Jacob. Even though Caleb’s are hazel, more brown than green. At least he’s not wearing contacts at the moment. Staci can’t stand the sight of Caleb with blue eyes.

Jacob asks to hold his niece. She’s so fucking small. They all stand together in the driveway, Delilah jealous over the fuss about her baby sister. But Caleb tells them that she’s a good sister. Most of the time. Likes having someone littler than her.

“You’ll have to protect her, right?” Jacob asks Delilah, still holding Esther in his arms. He practically swallows her up. Staci doesn’t want to admit what the sight does to him. “Because you’re the oldest.”

Delilah nods resolutely, “I’m gonna do it. Promise.”

Jacob smiles back at her.

Staci isn’t exactly calm, the whole situation is too much, but he manages not to break down as they head inside the house. John has taken Esther back, unwilling to be parted for very long, even if it’s his brother holding her. Caleb laughs that John won’t even let him hold her more than twenty minutes. 

“How did you find us?” Staci asks, perching himself on the edge of the couch, his feet up on the cushion. 

John explains, “I have unrestricted access to all of the accounts. I followed the money.”

Jacob calls John from the kitchen, asking if he wants to help with making lunch? John keeps Esther with him, but goes to meet his brother.

“We’ve been up in Canada, mostly,” Caleb says, Delilah leaning against him and playing on her tablet. “Have to move around a lot. But it’s been...fine. We’re together. And that’s what matters.”

Staci has a thousand questions. But all of them are sure to upset Caleb. And so he says nothing, except, “How long are you staying?”

Caleb shrugs, “Not long...John just...wanted Jacob to meet Esther, I think. He wants a family, _his_ family. And I’m trying my best to give it to him.”

Staci wants to scream at him, that the Seeds don’t _get what they want_ , not after what they did. But here is Staci, playing house with Jacob. Folding neatly into Jacob’s plans without protest. And, after all, Caleb is a mated alpha. He’ll do anything for John.

Like Jacob would do anything for Staci, even without the bite.

“The Marshals know we’re here, Caleb. They’ll be coming now that the roads are clearing up. You need to take John and leave, if you’re really planning on….whatever this is.”

“And what about you?” Caleb asks, “they’ll find you if you stay.”

Caleb’s right. And the knowledge makes Staci feel sick. He was resigned before to the idea that Jacob will be taken. And this time, Staci won’t be able to see him again. This time, despite Jacob’s best efforts, Staci is probably going to prison too. When he thought it was the Marshals coming up the driveway, Staci was ready, for the first time, to _run_. To run with Jacob and finally give himself over completely. Accept this as his fate.

But now that the adrenaline has worn off. He’s not so sure. The thought of being caged and restricted again sends him to the brink, every fucking time.

“I know,” Staci admits, “I know…”

—

Caleb and John insist they’re fine sleeping in the living room. There isn’t enough space for the four of them in the bedroom, anyway. The couch pulls out into a sofa bed, but Staci and Jacob never tried to extend it before. Jacob curses himself for not having made sure it worked properly when he was assessing the other furniture. As if they were expecting guests.

The bed pulls out just fine, but the joints are creaky. So while Staci and Caleb cook dinner, Jacob insists on fixing that. By the time the food is ready, his hands are covered in dust, clinging onto some sort of black gunk that was stuck in the couch joints. He asks Staci to get the bathroom door and the taps for him, so he doesn’t mess up the knobs.

—

“Jacob?” The lights went out in the living room an hour ago. But Staci hasn’t been able to fall to sleep. The dull hum of the woods normally lulls him, coupled with the solid mass of Jacob’s broad body against his. But his head feels full of static tonight. Overstimulation from unexpected guests.

He wants Jacob to take care of him...but they’ll have to be quiet. With the others asleep on the living room.

“Mmm, Staci?” Jacob runs his hand down Staci’s back, letting it linger a little longer at the base of his spine before pulling back up the center. Jacob slots his knee between Staci’s legs, brushing against his cock and core with a single, slow shift. “What do you need?”

“You,” Staci answers, dragging both his hands down the front of Jacob’s damaged chest, the texture of it familiar now. Doesn’t matter that Staci doesn’t know the stories that go with the scars. He knows the end result, and that’s enough. Jacob is mangled, horrible, and the only person Staci will ever want.

Jacob rolls him onto his back and he drops his knees apart so Jacob can slot between them, rubbing their cocks together through the thin fabric of their boxers. Warm enough tonight to not need more than that.

“There’s...something else I want,” Staci says, Jacob already starting to pull off their underwear to hasten the press of skin on skin. Shivering when Jacob pulls back to toss them aside, Staci has to be careful not to lose his nerve. “I want to pretend…”

Jacob inhales through his teeth, “What do you wanna pretend, Staci? Tell me.” He runs his hands along Staci’s sides, an effort to keep him warm.

“Want to...oh, God,” what’s the point if Staci can’t even say it now? “Want to pretend...that you could….we could…” Reaching up, he loops his arms around Jacob’s shoulders, pulling him back down so their faces are close. “That you’re putting a kid in me. Want to pretend that…”

“Staci…” Jacob sounds unsure. Staci knows it’s something Jacob aches for, wants to make real. Even if they both know better. Staci doesn’t begrudge him the desire anymore. And there’s no risk. They can just pretend.

Staci laughs nervously, trying to keep from crying, “Watching you...with Esther, got me fucked up, Jacob. Fixing this house too, you did it on fucking purpose. Don’t want one for real. Swear...just….fuck.”

Jacob wraps his arms around Staci’s midsection, hiking his back up off the mattress. Staci keeps his arms tight around Jacob’s shoulders, not sure where they’re headed. With Jacob’s mouth against Staci’s ear he whispers, “Still trying to kill me, aren’t you? Trying to hurt me? Fuck, Staci, fuck.” He pulls back enough to press his lips against Staci’s instead, kissing him harshly, biting at Staci’s lower lip.

“You want me to _breed_ you Staci?” his voice is still barely above a whisper. Mindful of the others in the living room. “Want me to fill you up with my come? Get you all fat with my _pups?_

And God, that’s such a fucking antiquated way of putting it. The kind of shit from trashy novels set a hundred years ago. But hell, if it doesn’t go straight to Staci’s cock. If he doesn’t get wet from the gravelly tone of Jacob’s voice.

“Yes,” Staci pants, “oh, God, Jacob, yes.” He’s soaked now, dripping over Jacob’s thighs. 

“Want me to fuck you like a bitch?” Jacob asks, feigning aggression. Staci can still hear the concern underneath. 

“What to see you, please,” Staci knows by now that he wants Jacob face-to-face. They’ve ceased pretending it’s an ‘accident’ each time they tie like that.

Jacob leans him back against the mattress, grabbing hold of one of Staci’s legs to hike up over his shoulder. Taps Staci’s opposite knee so he’ll bend it while he reaches to grab a pillow for under Staci’s hips. They’ll have to be careful to reposition just before Jacob knots. But like this, he’ll be able to fuck Staci deep.

Lining himself up, Jacob starts pushing in. Staci opens around him, groaning into the arm he throws across his face. He has to bite himself to keep the noise down when Jacob finally bottoms out, thick and warm inside of him. God, it never gets any easier.

Jacob takes a few more strokes before keeping up the game. “You’re going to look even prettier, Staci…” the harshness has drained from his voice. Not play-pretend now. Too dangerously close to how Jacob really feels. “Don’t think that’s really possible...but...wanna see it. Wanna know it’s mine...I...wanna protect you...Staci. Give you _everything._ Know I’m responsible. Took _everything away_. Fix that...fix that for you if I can. Give you a baby, Staci. Gonna look just like you.”

“Jacob,” this isn’t what he wanted. Or maybe it is. Staci isn’t certain anymore. He arches his back, letting Jacob sink into him again, his thrusts growing shorter, faster. His hands on Staci’s skin. 

“They’ll be perfect, Staci, perfect. We’ll be so good to them,” Jacob’s voice cracks under the strain of his guilt. “I promise you. I’ll be a good father...I will.”

Wet spots speckle Staci’s chest. Jacob’s tears. Maybe, now, Staci has the revenge he wanted. In the quiet of their bedroom. Sharing secrets that otherwise would never pass their lips.

Jacob knots him not long after. Staci hasn’t come yet, but Jacob strokes him as he knots. The waves of pleasure coursing through him, milking Jacob’s cock.

“Feel that?” Jacob asks, the game not quite finished yet. “It’ll be ours. Our child…”

Staci thinks he knows now, why Jacob never saw his children. Even when their other parent was in the cult. Only sent resources for their care. And Staci thinks he understands why this is different. That doesn’t make Jacob right. But at least now, Staci thinks that the pieces fit. 

While they’re knotted, Staci plays with Jacob’s hair. His fingers feel loose, detached from his body. It would be easy to fall asleep now. But he feels like there is something more to say. And if he doesn’t get it out now, the window will slam shut on his knuckles. 

“You’re not your father, Jacob. You never were.”

“No,” Jacob replies, “I was worse.”

Staci could tell him that doesn’t matter. He’s tried to change, when his father never did. But Staci still can’t humble himself in front of Jacob’s guilt.

—

As dawn breaks, Caleb and John start loading their children back into the truck. Staying here puts them all at risk. And they have every intention of evading capture. Staci chews at his fingers, his nails already bitten down to where they hurt. He still doesn’t have another plan for when the Marshals come. But he’s more convinced this morning that the current one won’t work.

He wants to be with Jacob. Whatever that might mean.

Maybe it is the conditioning. 

Maybe he really is in love.

Maybe he doesn’t care anymore either way.

With Delilah and Esther strapped in, John comes around from the passenger side to hug his brother, say goodbye to Staci. Caleb pulls Staci into a hug, telling him to stay safe. As if any of them have a choice in the matter.

Staci barely hears it, over the sound of the truck’s engine, 

More vehicles, coming up the driveway. More than one...two or three. At least one of them is struggling with the steep gravel path.

Caleb hears them too, pulling away to prod at John’s shoulder, “get the kids back out. Get into the house.”

Jacob turns around, watching the drive for a moment before turning back to Staci, “What do you want?”

Staci stands in silence, his mouth open, gaping like a fish. 

“Stace,” Caleb interjects, “help John with the kids, _please_.”

Frozen, Staci has to decide. This time, it’s the Marshals. No more false-starts.

“You,” Staci says to Jacob, “I want you.”

Jacob frowns, “help John, take the kids inside.”

“What’s going on!?” Delilah shouts. John is already unbuckling her from her child-seat in the back.

“Do you have a gun?” Jacob asks Caleb, already heading towards the shed for his rifle. They have a bow and arrows in there too.

Staci still has his pistol inside the house. Once he gets John and the children inside, he’ll come right back out and help.

Caleb is already pulling a shotgun out from the locker in the truck bed by the time Staci has Esther unlatched from her carseat. John has Delilah, wriggling and screaming on his hip, pounding against his side to be let down. When he sees that Staci has Esther, he runs towards the house, ignoring Delilah’s protests.

Staci only catches the barest glimpse of the Marshals’ vehicles coming up from the slanted drive before he gets Esther into the house. 

“The bathroom,” Staci says. “Furthest from the driveway. Keep the kids down in the tub,” he orders John. “You need to stay with them.”

John nods, heading back towards the bathroom with Delilah. She still doesn’t know what’s going on. John tries to soothe her. Saying he’ll explain later. Right now, she has to keep low and stay quiet. He puts her down in the bathtub and holds out his arms to take Esther from Staci.

There’s gunshots before Staci can even race to the bedroom. He crouches low, trying to avoid stray bullets that might come in through the windows. The walls should be thick enough. God, unless they’ve brought explosives. Fuck. He grabs his pistol from the bedside table, ready to climb out the window so he can hopefully come around and flank the Marshals.

Between the three of them, they’re certain to make short work of the Marshals. Fuck, Caleb has faced an entire army and won. Fucking indestructible. And Staci hasn’t come this far to fucking die now. 

The Marshals aren’t expecting him. Even looking for him. Already too occupied with the two armed alphas at the front of the house. They must know John and Staci are here, along with the children. But they aren’t expecting either of them to fight.

Staci manages to get behind the shed for cover, before leaning out to catch one of the Marshals in the side. He shoots three times in total. Into the meatiest part of the Marshal’s torso. His body armor only covers the front and back, leaving him exposed at the sides. Easier to aim than a headshot, and just as effective if Staci manages to rupture something.

The Marshal crumples, giving Caleb and Jacob more breathing room. But Staci has lost the element of surprise. One of the other Marshals starts to advance on him, using the closest of the trucks for cover and trying to get in by the woodpile. Jacob shoots through his neck before he can advance any further.

They’re almost through. Only two of the Marshals left. And once they’re down, they can get into Caleb’s truck and drive to the border. John’s inside man at the checkpoint will let them through. Right now, Staci can’t think out any further than that. But it’s enough to keep him fighting.

“STACI!” Caleb screams, just before the Marshal who has flanked Staci grabs him around the waist, hoisting him up like a human shield. As the Marshal drags Staci back, he sees a second officer heading towards the bathroom window.

“Forget me! The bathroom!” Staci yells, trying to kick and scratch his way free from the Marshal holding him tight.

Both Jacob and Caleb rush toward the back of the property, desperate to protect unarmed-John and the children. The Marshal at Staci’s back puts a pistol to his skull, yelling at him to stop fighting.

Staci can still see the Marshal heading towards the rear of the house when Caleb emerges from the other side. Sprinting full speed, he drops his shotgun to pick up pace. It’s not clear what’s going on until it happens. Caleb throwing his body on top of the Marshal and tackling him to the ground. The primed grenade exploding between them.

No.

No. No. No. No.

This isn’t fucking possible. Caleb Nylander doesn’t die. 

But there he lies, in pieces, strewn across the yard. Caught in the still-bare branches of the surrounding trees.

Staci screams. Jacob reacts immediately, turning his rifle and shooting the Marshal holding Staci through the throat. His accuracy pinpoint sharp. 

After that, nothing but the ringing in Staci’s ears and John’s stricken wailing.

Oh, God.

They have to move fast. Jacob hurries over, grabbing Staci and holding him against his chest, confirming they’re both still alive and putting himself between Staci and what remains of Caleb’s corpse. 

“Jacob,” Staci can’t hear anything but John, “they were mated...Jacob...oh god, Caleb was blown to meat. John…”

Jacob’s mouth opens when he realizes. Taking Staci by the hand, they head back into the cabin. Most of the windows have been shattered in the crossfire. They step carefully over broken glass.

John’s pained noises don’t ebb. But over top of his anguish, Staci can hear Delilah, asking her daddy what’s wrong.

John is curled up in the bathtub, little Esther against his chest. His face red and streaked with tears, his body shaking, convulsing on every labored breath. The mating mark in his neck looks raw, mangled beyond recognition as John tries to tear at it with his nails.

“Delilah, honey, come here,” Staci reaches out to take her hand. “Uncle Jacob is going to take care of John, okay?”

Delilah looks terrified, her eyes darting from her father, to Staci, to Jacob and back. But she finally settles, taking Staci’s hand.

They sit out on the living room couch, punched through with bullet holes. Her tablet is still in one piece. And Staci gives it to her in an attempt to keep her occupied. 

She asks where her dad is? Staci tells her her daddy will tell her later.

It takes a few minutes before John settles, at least enough that Staci can’t hear him anymore. Jacob emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, Esther in his arms. “He’ll be out in a minute. Just washing his face.”

“We have to get out of here, and soon.”

Jacob nods, sitting on the other side of Delilah. “By now, the Marshals’ Office will know their first squad failed. They’ll come with heavier weapons in the second wave.” 

But they have even less time than they think, when they both hear helicopter blades overhead. With the windows smashed, there’s no mistaking the whirring noise. Fuck. Depending on the ordinance on the chopper, they’ll never make it down the mountain in the truck.

Jacob has already grabbed both kids, hauling them back to their father. But with the airstrike, the bathroom won’t be safe either. 

“Jacob!” Staci shouts, chasing after him, “I have a plan, we can take the chopper out of the mountains. I can fly it. We just need to get it to land.”

John looks at him like he’s lost his damn mind, and maybe he has. That helicopter is here because they’ve already gone and killed the other Marshals. They’re likely to open fire on them as soon as they step foot outside the house.

“I’ll go out and surrender,” Jacob says, “distract them.”

Staci shakes his head, “No, I need you to shoot. You’re the only one with the skill.”

Jacob knows Staci is right. Staci isn’t a terrible shot, but he’s nowhere near as accurate as Jacob at a distance. And they can’t send John. It has to be Staci. 

“Make sure it’s on the ground before taking out the pilot. We can’t have it crash,’ Staci says, turning to head out the door. 

Grabbing Staci by the arm, Jacob hauls him back, kissing him hurriedly before releasing. 

Staci walks out with his hands up above his head. He still has his pistol tucked into the back of his jeans. But it won’t make a bit of difference. His life is in Jacob’s hands now. After holding back for the last day, he lets himself cry. Will make him look weak. But Staci knows he’s not. 

When he reaches the yard, far enough from the house that the chopper has him in clear view, he drops to his knees, hands still over his head. Not worth saying anything, the Marshals won’t hear him over the noise of the chopper. But he tries to make himself look small, defeated.

There’s just enough room in the yard, in between the abandoned trucks and bleeding bodies, for a skilled pilot to set down the skids. Staci waits for what feels like ages for the helicopter to finally land. He keeps his head bowed, staying still while two Marshals climb out the bay, another from the cockpit next to the pilot. Four, four shots that Jacob has to land.

Three, if Staci can take out one.

Two of the Marshals draw their guns on Staci, shouting at him to stay down. He bends even further, pressing his forehead into the dirt while he listens to their boots approaching. One grabs him by the arm, hiking him up so he can cuff him.

Crack.

The one holding him goes down. Staci grabs his gun from the waistband of his pants, aiming for the second’s head at close range.

In the distance, he hears the other two Marshals screaming obscenities. He hears his own gun as the Marshal’s brain matter splatters back into his face. Then Jacob’s rifle, again. Hopefully the pilot before he can lift off. Jacob’s rifle, a third time, the odd Marshal out.

That’s all of them.

Staci tries to wipe his face with his shirtsleeve, sticky blood clinging to his skin and in his hair. No matter how much he rubs, it won’t get clean. He has to focus. He has to fly the chopper.

Jacob and John run out of the house, Jacob with Delilah and John with Esther. Both of them shouting at him to _move_.

But Staci doesn’t, still too overwhelmed to make his legs work. Jacob runs back to grab him, lifting him up off the ground and carrying him awkwardly to the helicopter.

“Gotta come back, Staci, you gotta fly.”

Once Jacob gets him to the cockpit, his body runs on autopilot, climbing in and running through his typical pre-flight routinee as if they have all the time in the world. His muscle memory satisfied, he starts ascending, oblivious to everything John and Jacob say to him.

He heads north, not really having a better idea of where he’s going. After ten minutes, Jacob shoves a phone at him. “John says to go here, a car will be waiting for us.”

Staci grabs the phone from Jacob, holding it at an angle where he can vaguely keep an eye on where he’s flying while looking at the location John has marked on the map. He manages to just zoom out enough to get an idea of landmarks around the area, before passing the phone back to Jacob.

John’s contact meets them not far from the border. It’s too dangerous to try and cross into Canada by air. There’s a border guard that John has already pocketed, the one who let them back into Montana in the first place. 

Staci sets the chopper down, going through his landing checklist. Delaying stepping out of the cockpit.

John makes final arrangements with his contact, using his phone as part of the transaction. Transferring money, maybe. Staci doesn’t know. Jacob has to come back to the chopper to get Staci out.

“You don’t want this anymore,” Jacob says, brushing Staci’s hair back behind his ear, once they’re both on solid ground. “What do you want?”

“I can’t have what I want,” Staci says, hoping that Jacob will understand.

Jacob nods, “Okay, alright.” He sighs, pulling Staci close, “I’m sorry, Staci. I’m sorry.”

Staci clings tightly to his shirt. 

One of them has to drive the car. They don’t have a carseat for Esther, though Delilah can probably manage to be buckled into the back. At least one of them has to go with John. 

It doesn’t have to be both of them. 

“Take care of your brother, okay?” Staci croaks, his chest heaving, pulse racing. 

Everyone always leaves. But this time, Staci gets to decide. Jacob demands that Staci choose, without a word. Without the judgement they have all feared since the war.

“I’ll drive,” Staci takes the keys from Jacob’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still don’t know.


End file.
